SENIOR leaders at Colchester Council have warned there will be more tough times ahead as the authority looks to reduce its spending by 20 per cent in order to balance the books.

Speaking to the Gazette, Colchester Council’s chief executive, Pam Donnelly, and council leader, David King, said the authority is now faced with the challenge of higher prices and rising demands, but with a budget that will be cut from £25million to about £21million over the next financial year.

The authority is currently tasked with making savings of about £4 million to balance the budget, and will need to find at least a further £3 million in 2024/25.

Spending on staff, meanwhile, is likely to fall by about £500,000.

Though the uphill task faced by Colchester Council is mirrored in local authorities across the country, senior leaders at the town hall have said the council is not facing bankruptcy as is the case with bodies in Thurrock, Reading and Woking.

Colchester’s plight may not be as severe as some of its neighbours in the south of England, but Mr King and Mrs Donnelly have said that in order for the council to survive, it is going to have to undergo a culture shift whereby it works with, rather than delivers for, community groups.

“That’s not an easy message to communicate,” Mrs Donnelly admits.

Colchester Council’s chief executive, who has now been in place for 16 months, said the authority has had to put in a huge amount of effort so it can operate more efficiently, recovering as it has from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It became very clear that some changes needed to be made,” she said.

“It was more to do with the Covid pandemic situation and the recovery, because it came on the back of years and years of austerity; we needed change to make sure the council is stable going forward.

“We need to make sure the council can respond to those external challenges like interest rates, inflation, and the rising cost of utilities.”

As council leader David King is keen to point out, the financial pressures facing councils across Britain are not of authorities’ own making – but, he adds, it is still the council’s responsibility to survive in the circumstances.

“We have got the legacy of the past combined with the post pandemic squeeze on income and an inflationary cycle for which there has been no help from government,” he said.

“[Funding from government] has been in decline in real terms and numerical terms.

“Think about what inflation does – the amount of money from government has shrunk almost every year since the 2008-09 financial crash, and it’s not going to be remedied.

“It equates to about a £10million drop in funding.

“There’s a cap on how much we can raise council tax; when inflation was at 13 per cent, we couldn’t raise tax by more than three per cent.

“We have to raise money in other ways.”

Although the predicament is not unique to Colchester, residents still want answers as to how the council’s decisions – even if they are made in response to wider scale problems – are going to affect them and the services they use every day.

Although residents may not see an obvious change in their services day to day, what they will notice is that, in the cases of waste collection for instance, they are now paying for a service which was once provided effectively free of charge.

Wheelie bin charges for garden waste are coming into effect where residents will be charged a one-off £10 fee; households without a wheelie bin will have to fork out £20 extra.

Thereafter, households will have to pay £55 a year for the council’s garden waste service.

What also seems certain is that community and volunteer groups will assume more duties which the council simply does not have the means to continue offering on its own.

“We are going to have to ask more of our communities and stakeholders to rebalance our financial position,” Mrs Donnelly explained.

“Our residents will, over time, see us pulling back in areas and we will have to work with communities rather than deliver for communities.

“If we can live within our means, it means we can breathe and if we can breathe, then we can grow.”

With local authorities at the mercy of the economic uncertainty which surrounds them, it must sometimes feel as if councils are the equivalent of rubber dinghies being battered around in a violent storm at sea.

“Local government will slope its shoulders and bear the burden; we don’t expect a materially better future,” Mr King added.

At the moment, keeping its head above water is the best the council can realistically hope for.