Council budget cuts to include community boards: ‘Tough and painful decisions’

A cut to community boards funding is among the savings proposed in Buckinghamshire Council’s draft budget for 2025 to 2026.

A total of £1 million is set to be slashed from the authority’s budget for community boards from April if its proposed financial plan is approved by full council next month.

The council’s 16 boards aim to empower residents and groups to influence decision making and the delivery of local projects.

Council leader Martin Tett said: “We have done a pretty massive cut on the community board budget and on the staff to support those community boards.”

Speaking during Monday’s budget scrutiny meeting, he added that he ‘regretted’ the further cuts to the boards but said his authority was ‘forced’ to cut such non-statutory funding.

The leader also said he had taken the ‘tough and painful’ decision within his own portfolio to take 25 per cent out of the budget of the communications team.

He said: “People no longer get the service from the comms team that they used to get several years ago and that is just the fact that there are fewer people there and smaller budgets.”

Cllr Stuart Wilson told the meeting that the communications cut was ‘made last year into this year, in-budget’.

Cllr Tett also said there were ‘significant budget cuts’ to economic development, meaning the council ‘will not be supporting local businesses’ such as a high street coffee shop or market trader in the way it had previously.

He added: “That is just the reality of the political choices we have to take to produce a balanced budget.”

In drafting its budget, the council looked at the 1,000 responses it received from residents in a consultation on spending held between August and October last year.

It showed that care and support services for older people and vulnerable adults was the most important area for residents, with 61 per cent saying the council should prioritise spending on this.

This was followed by road maintenance (52 per cent) and educational services (40 per cent).

Meanwhile, 48 per cent told the council not to prioritise public health services spending, 46 per cent told it not to prioritise culture and tourism spending and 40 per cent told it not to prioritise car parking spending.

During Monday’s meeting, Cllr Tett discussed the unpopularity of implementing budget cuts, referring to the council’s previous decision to ‘no longer promote tourism within the county’ as an example.

He said: “I cannot tell you the amount of aggravation I have had as a result of that cut. Virtually everyone who provides food and beverage in the county, all the business groups, lobby groups galore nationally and locally have been on my back about that cut.”

During Monday’s meeting, Conservative Councillor Graham Harris asked if the council could not make savings from the budget for its corporate management team.

The authority’s top tier of management includes chief executive officer Rachael Shimmin, who enjoys a £240,000 salary, followed by deputy chief executive Sarah Ashmead on £190,000 and several other highly paid directors.

Cllr Tett defended the council’s top execs, saying it had a ‘very small’ management team, who were ‘strong, capable’ and proportionate for the size of the authority.

He said: “The reality is you can’t manage something as complex as a £1.3 billion organisation on a couple of staff.”