Bedford Borough Council is facing an “existential threat” if it fails to get this year’s budget back under control, a senior councillor has warned.
Councillor Michael Headley (Lib Dem, Putnoe) sounded the alarm during yesterday’s Budget and Corporate Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee (10 July), highlighting a forecast overspend of £9.4 million.
Cllr Headley, who is the committee chair, added that this is almost the entire value of the council’s general fund balance, which stands at £9.6 million.
“The general fund balance is the money that you use to balance the budget if it doesn’t balance at the end of the year,” he said, “This is practically all gone. We’re all hoping that things will improve but as things stand we have to take the forecast at face value.
“It didn’t have to be like this, these pressures, or a large proportion of them, were evident at the time the budget was set.”
“It’s not impossible that other things will arise as the year progresses, and there’s no flexibility now in terms of where the budget is at with that 9.4 million overspend.”
But Cllr Marc Frost (Conservative, Wixams and Wilstead), Portfolio Holder for Finance and Corporate Services, has said the council was “working furiously to address the financial pressures”.
And he blamed the prevous Lib Dem administration for the problems.
During the meeting, Cllr Headley also criticised the way the original budget was set, arguing that many of the current financial pressures were foreseeable and flagged at the time.
Tackling challenges
“This committee literally made a recommendation to council saying that the budgets for temporary accommodation and social care weren’t high enough,” he said. “It’s not that these things have happened since the budget was set – they were evident at the time.
“This is not a hindsight view.”
Cllr Headley claimed that the budget approved in February was never truly balanced and that the current situation could have been avoided with more realistic planning.
“I think it’s a tragedy that the council has been put in this position by setting an unbalanced budget in the first place,” he said.
He urged members to continue voicing concern to the Executive and proposed that the committee write directly to the mayor and chief executive to stress the urgency of restoring the budget to balance.
“I don’t think we can give those messages often enough. It’s important people take notice,” he said.
Speaking after the meeting, cllr Frost said: “Like councils up and down the country, we face intense pressures from rising costs in adult social care, children’s services, and temporary accommodation, but this Conservative administration is tackling these challenges head-on with a robust package of mitigations already underway, including spending controls and workforce reviews.
“This is what financial responsibility looks like, and residents can be assured that we are on top of the situation and in control.”
He added: “Scrutiny should help fix problems, not become an opportunity to score points off the back of their own failures. The Lib Dem financial mess did not appear overnight. It is the product of years of fantasy budgets, hollow promises, and reckless decisions.
“While the Liberal Democrats stand on the sidelines, waving and predicting disaster, we are getting on with the job of securing a financially sustainable future for Bedford, protecting services, and delivering for residents.”
A council report shared with the committee confirms the forecast overspend of £9.4 million.
It set out a series of actions being taken to address the situation, including spending controls, staffing reductions, and plans to review the capital programme and priority investments.
Officers have been tasked with identifying savings equivalent to 10 per cent of staffing budgets, with £2.5 million of mitigations already factored into forecasts, and further options are being explored.
Balancing the books will be “incredibly difficult,” councillor Headley admitted, but “obviously incredibly necessary.”
“Otherwise, the council is facing an existential threat.”
By John Guinn
Local Democracy Reporter
