Can you take the Torbay’s online budget challenge?

By Kevin Dixon, on Friday, September 24, 2010

Torbay residents have been invited to help with ‘the budget funding challenge’ by logging on to a new simulation programme on the council’s website.

Public service cuts for The Bay mean a potential 25 per cent cut in funding over the next four years. This is in addition to the cuts already made for the current financial year of around £1.3 million revenue and £1.6 million capital. There’s also a commitment to freeze council tax.

These cuts should also be seen in the light of significant reductions in welfare spending, along with the freeze on council workers’ wages, which could well increase unemployment, poverty and effect demand on local services.

Though Torbay will not know its budget settlement for next year until after the Spending Review in the autumn, it looks like the council may have to make savings of 10 per cent (£13.5 million) for 2011/12.

The online simulator allows residents to find out how the council budget was spent and how much different areas of the council cost. They can then decide how they would allocate the money across the departments. The council needs to cut a significant proportion of its spending, so are asking residents to find around £13.5 million savings as a minimum without putting Council Tax up.

As part of the consultation process, residents are also being asked whether they would be willing to volunteer to keep services open. Would they, for example, as a member of the Big Society, step forward to care for older people, run the library, a youth club or a park?

However, critics have suggested that the simulator is a fairly crude mechanism to set a budget, and that it does not include some of the other ways local authorities are considering to reduce expenditure.

Whatever the outcomes of the consultation, it appears that we may well see a radical change in the way that the authority functions and how it sees itself and the community.

One of the few benefits for The Bay may be that social change may now need to be embraced and welcomed, rather than being denied and resisted as it has been in the past.

The budget simulator is available from the Torbay Council website.