Shropshire Star

Shropshire Council could face bankruptcy, Labour group leader warns

Shropshire Council could face bankruptcy in the coming years if the Government doesn't bring in a fairer funding scheme, a councillor has warned.

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Shropshire Council's base at Shirehall

Councillor Alan Moseley, who heads the council's Labour group, said that while the council was able to bridge its funding gap for the coming year, the future seemed unsustainable.

Councillors yesterday voted through the council's financial strategy for the coming two years with its leader, Councillor Peter Nutting, saying Councillor Moseley was scaremongering.

However Councillor Moseley insisted the strategy is unsustainable.

"Using one-off pots of money the council has a zero funding gap for 2019/20 but that is not the case for future years – £14 million for 20/21 and leaping to £40 million for 21/22.

"We are heading for bankruptcy with the council hoping that the fairer funding scheme, something we were told not to rely on, will save our bacon."

Most controversial in the financial strategy are the proposed cuts in the public health budget.

Councillors criticised cuts to projects including work to tackle obesity, infection control, mental health and smoking during pregnancy.

Last month Shropshire Council identified a need to save an additional £2m on top of the £2m noted in the previous financial review.

Councillor Madge Sheinton said she was horrified by the planned cuts.

"We are now facing two trances of £2 million cuts from public health," she said.

"These proposals are like a time bomb sat in the middle of the room and will shake the foundations of the tremendous amount of work taking place in Shropshire."

Councillor Heather Kidd added: "Public health cuts with have a significant impact on our adult social care and children's services and will affect mental health work and projects to cut smoking in pregnancy.

"They will all have serious affects on the health of the people of Shropshire."

Claims of impending bankruptcy were dismissed by Councillor Brian Williams.

"The strategy looks forward and identifies problems that could come to us," he said.

"Our expenditure will exceed income by £60 million in six years if we do not take action. But the administration is forward thinking and we are working to prevent that. We are aware of the problem and taking steps to deal with it."

Councillor Nutting said: "This council is financially stable. In the following years if we get the same grants we are getting now we won't be in financial problems. We are in a good place and we need to acknowledge this."

Shropshire Council also set its base for the council tax for the coming year hearing that for 2019/20 the council tax base will see an increase of 1.97 per cent from the previous years.