Alternative budget proposals ‘laughable’ says Shropshire council leader

The leader of Shropshire Council has dismissed opposition budget proposals as “laughable” after a row broke out over in-sourcing contracts at the authority.

Opposition groups have been invited to submit alternative budget suggestions as the council seeks to close a £23m funding gap in its 2024/25 finances.

But Conservative group leader Lezley Picton accused opposition leaders of creating a “wish-list” which avoided making hard decisions about cutting services, during a partisan meeting of the council’s Transformation and Improvement Scrutiny Committee, on Wednesday (January 10).

Both the Labour and Green proposals suggest making changes to council procurement processes with Councillor Julia Buckley, the Labour group leader, saying the authority could make savings by completing the majority of road repairs in house rather than via its current outsourced arrangements.

The Labour group also suggest bringing care worker provision in house and in-sourcing traffic management contracts.

“Every time we are paying a consultant and a contractor and a sub contractor we are paying a level of profit to a private company. How many layers and levels of additional surcharge is tax payers money being spent on and how much more accountability control are we losing via these subcontracts?” said Councillor Buckley.

Liberal Democrat proposals include scrapping of the proposed Shropshire Council civic hub in the new Shrewsbury Riverside development to fund a partial refurbishment of Shirehall, but also included measures such as loans to allow residents to insulate their homes.

Councillor Roger Evans said their proposals had worked within the budget proposed by the administration to add value for residents.

“The budget that was put forward by the cabinet – we’ve used that as a starting point. We didn’t want to tear it apart, we have not got the capability or access to the information that the cabinet has,” he said.

“We’ve got to make this council financially viable for the future.”

But Conservative leader Councillor Picton said proposals from the opposition groups have “made it worse”, and criticised opposition group leaders for “constant sniping” at council officers.

“There’s a £23m budget gap that three group leaders have been asked to find,” she said.

“You haven’t done that, you’ve added four or five things and made it worse.

“What [The Liberal Democrats] and the Labour group have done is come up with a wish list and it doesn’t fill that budget gap at all.

“If we accepted the [Lib Dem] alternative budget, we would have used all our remaining reserves. What I expected to see from you was a reduction of £23.6m in services but that’s difficult isn’t it? It’s really hard because it involves making really difficult decisions and none of you want to do that.”

Green proposals revolve around negotiating contracts with local suppliers to reduce costs and create a ‘carbon-neutral’ supply chain.

Julian Dean, Green Party Leader said: “Yes – we were asked with looking at the funding gap but alternative budgets aren’t just about that, they are about principles and ways of how the council should work.

“It’s quite legitimate for opposition councillors to bring forward revenue neutral proposals which improve how to deliver services in line with our values.

“A lot of the arguments around in-sourcing and privatisation is precisely that the effect of it has been to de-skill the public sector.

“The specifics of the action required in our proposal is to enable our procurement officers to better negotiate contracts both from a de-carbonisation point of view and a cost point of view.”

The alternative budget proposals will be discussed again at Cabinet on Wednesday, January 17.