Peter Oakford Budget Consultation 2021 – Video Transcription (3.31 mins)

LM – Lucy Mayor, Press Officer, KCC

PO – Peter Oakford, Deputy Leader, KCC

LM: Peter tell us first of all, what is the Consultation that is being launched today?

PO: Today’s the day where we are starting our Budget Consultation for the next financial year.  As we do every time this year, its time for us to go out and ask residents their thoughts on how we spend our money and some of the areas where we need to make some savings. 

LM: So why is this Budget Consultation so important?

PO: I think this year is different than normal years because we are coming out of 16 months of lockdown due to the Covid pandemic, we had a high level of increased expenditure during that time, so we have to look again and start afresh with our budget, knowing of course, that some of the expenditure related to Covid is still going to be with us. 

LM: Tell us about the financial challenges facing Kent County Council at the moment.

PO: We are in a period were spending demand continues to increase and the spending demand increase at a faster rate than the income that we receive.  So, the challenge to us is we don’t really have enough money every year to meet the full level of expenditure we have.  With covid we know that is going to be higher.  Although Government supported us with extra grants last year, we don’t anticipate any further this year, therefore we have to balance our budget accordingly.

LM: So, what impact has Covid 19 had on the Council’s budget?

PO: It’s had a huge impact. The Government of course, put certain measures to Local Authorities that we had to implement, Track and Trace etc, some of which they covered with grants and some of which they didn’t, but the base budget of the Council has been impacted because we’ve seen a loss of Council Tax, we’ve seen a loss of Business Rates, all of which go towards making a balanced budget at the end of the year.  Council Tax for an example is approximately 50% of our overall income each year. 

LM: What are you asking people in this Consultation? 

PO:  I think this year it’s really important that we have feedback from residents around the level of comfort to changes that we may need to make to our services.   We may not be able to offer all the services in the way that we always have done so we need feedback on that.  We’d also like to understand resident’s thoughts on the level of Council Tax increase.  In the past we have had to make some fairly high levels because of the Social Care Precept, so we would like to understand if there is support for a Council Tax rise of a modest level in order to support the services that we continue to offer and is there anything we should be doing differently?  It’s always nice to understand what residents really feel and if there is strong feeling that there’s areas we could look at, we’d like to understand that as well.

LM: Why should people take part in this consultation?

PO:  Following the past 16 months of lockdown we now have to make some of the toughest decisions that this Council has ever taken, that’s why we need a feedback from residents as part of this consultation.  We need to understand what’s important to them.  Elements of this will then feed into our 5-year strategic plan and it will help set the Councils priorities for the future.