Kirklees Council 2025/26 budget sparks heated debate with £30m shortfall
Fears of "financial mismanagement" and "managing decline" were shared by councillors at Wednesday night's full council meeting as plans were discussed on how the authority plans to manage a £30m shortfall.
This came as part of a debate following an update on the council’s budget strategy for 2025/26 and the years to follow, from Cabinet Member for Finance and Regeneration, Cllr Graham Turner. The council has forecast an £18m overspend in the current financial year which it says can be reduced to £12.8m through the use of reserves and contingencies.
However, challenges are expected to persist well beyond this, with the council needing to save millions of pounds to balance the books in 2025/26. Among the largest pressures are the cost and demand experienced in the social care sector, shortfalls in income and the rising cost of temporary accommodation.
Councillor Turner spoke of the difficult financial backdrop nationally, and told the meeting: “It’s hardly a surprise or a secret that we face a challenging situation in setting next year’s budget and further financial challenges over the coming years. I’ve always tried to be open and honest with residents about the challenges we face. This year’s medium-term financial strategy (MTFS) is no different.
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“It sets out the scale of the challenges we face - we need to find around £30m in savings to balance our budget next year. The MTFS describes how we’re already driving those savings - freezing most of our recruitment, eliminating all sorts of spending, and making very difficult decisions about some services and capital investments. But we do need to do more…
He added: “All we want here in Kirklees is a fair share of the money available. We’re not greedy. It makes no sense for much wealthier parts of the country to be able to have a lower council tax than we do and still have a bigger budget and nowhere near the same levels of deprivation and rising demand we face here in Kirklees.”
Leader of the Green group, Cllr Andrew Cooper, highlighted the multi-billion pound funding gap for public services as the "real issue" behind the council’s financial troubles.
He continued: “We are not safeguarding services, I’m sorry Cllr Turner, that’s not actually what’s happening, that’s maybe what you say is happening but actually what we’re doing as a council is all that we can do which is managing decline.
“We’re managing decline because we have sports centres which we can’t open, we have town halls which are closed, we have care homes which have got dubious futures - that is not safeguarding services, that is managing decline.”
Councillor Yusra Hussain (Community Alliance, Batley West) who left the Labour group earlier this year and became an independent, said she was concerned about the Labour administration’s “financial mismanagement” and the ‘severe neglect’ of north Kirklees, with the closure of Batley Baths, Dewsbury Sports Centre and Customer Service Centre.
Councillor Darren O’Donovan (Labour, Dewsbury West) took issue with this point and said: “It’s entirely inappropriate and misleading, given it has never happened before, to accuse any group running this council of misspending any money when clearly there’s no evidence of that - and it has to be put on record that there’s no evidence of that and it shouldn’t be suggested by any group…
“What you can see when you read the documents in front of you is that we’ve made huge increases in spending on adult social care, huge increases in spending in children’s services. You can’t have good Ofsted ratings in children’s care homes and in children’s services and adult social care without that investment that we’ve prioritised as a Labour group over the years.”
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