Praise for Northumberland council's finance team after budget underspend delivered

New figures released by the authority showed there had been an underspend of £2.1m on the 2022/23 budget - less than half of its £5.2m inflationary cover.

It completes a remarkable turnaround for an authority that was predicting a £17m overspend as late as September.

At a meeting of the council’s cabinet, deputy leader Richard Wearmouth explained that the saved money would go back into the council’s coffers for the coming year.

He said: “It was a year that was very complex in terms of the various inflationary pressures that we felt at that time.

“We have a net underspend of £2.1 million. £1 million will go into the regeneration development reserve, which will help us in terms of our corporate plan aims to deliver jobs and investment into the county.

“We’re adding £100,000 to the regeneration reserve and we’re adding £1 million into the exceptional inflation reserve to help us with any inflation and delivering on our capital programme and core services.”

Council leader Glen Sanderson paid tribute to staff who had helped to deliver the council in at budget.

He said: “I’d like to add my thanks to the finance team and also to all parts of the council who have had to deal with inflation of over 10%, and who have been able to manage to make some savings and create an addition to reserve funding.”

Coun Sanderson also pointed out that the council tax rise imposed on residents by the council was far lower than inflation. In the budget agreed in February, the council’s Conservative-led administration increased by 2.99% as well as a 2% increase in the adult social care precept.

The maximum increase allowed without a referendum was increased by chancellor Jeremy Hunt in his autumn statement, and stands at 3% in council tax and 2% in the social care precept.

Coun Sanderson continued:” Our council tax increase was less than 3%. We’ve managed to keep our council tax at that rate, which demonstrates our priority is about providing value for money.”