Savings need to be made and more income raised over the next five years at South Cambridgeshire District Council, the head of finance has said.
The authority forecasts a £6.302million budget gap between 2023-24 and 2027-28.
Peter Maddock, the head of finance, said he had not seen as much “volatility and uncertainty” in all his time in local government.
Speaking at a meeting of the scrutiny and overview committee last Thursday (December 15), he said the scenarios the authority had modelled were the most likely, but were still based on a lot of assumptions
He considered the biggest risk facing the council’s funding would come in 2025-26 with the fair funding review.
He said: “Potentially it could move funding away from district councils to county councils. That is certainly the biggest risk we face, and it is becoming more and more apparent that will actually happen 2025-26.
“In order to meet that challenge from the council’s point of view, we need to make savings.
“Obviously there is a risk at some stage you make savings and at some point you will not be able to go further. I am certainly confident that in the next couple years the transformation programme will be able to deliver significant savings over that period.”
Mr Maddock said that the council’s ability to generate its own income, for example through investments, would be important as this would be “less painful” than cutting services.
Cllr John Williams (Lib Dem, Fen Ditton and Fulbourn), the lead cabinet member for resources, said the council was lucky it was in an area of economic growth.
He said: “We are always looking for not just savings but looking for income and that includes investment income as well as looking at loans to other organisations.
“It is clear looking at the Greater Cambridge area we are the growth area for the UK at the moment. There is the potential over the coming five years to see economic growth in the Greater Cambridge area delivering for us additional income on investments or other sources.
“I am quite optimistic. We are very fortunate in South Cambridgeshire in the fact that we are in an area that will continue to have economic growth, regardless of the condition of the rest of the country, in a strange sort of way.
“We are in a very privileged position and therefore we can feel that there will be opportunities in the future, whether or not those will deliver the sort of returns that will enable us to offset the deficit. I can not predict that, but we will do everything we can to make sure that we can do that.”
The district council agreed an investment strategy in 2019, and in April of that year announced that it had paid £13million for the grade A office space building at 140 Cambridge Science Park in or to generate rental income.
