Staff News - February 2024

Council Budget Challenge 2024/25 - 'Tell Us More'

Dear Colleagues

The Council is in the second phase of planning for setting its 2024/25 budget.  We now know that we are facing a £113m budget gap over the next three years, and within that there is a need to find savings of £57m over the three years, £38m of which is in year 2024/25.

Thank you to the many members of staff who submitted suggestions and took part in the budget survey in December – you are among over 2,000 people who have had their say – providing over 7,000 suggestions which have been assessed for deliverability and impact.

We are now inviting you to ‘Tell Us More’ about the suggestions received to help us shape the final budget proposals by completing a second ‘Tell Us More’ Budget Survey. This survey asks for your thoughts on the suggestions that have been fed back from staff, Councillors, and the public, and communities on how the Council could generate new income and how it could change what it does.  We will also be asking the public to feed back as well. The links to these surveys will go live tomorrow.  

It is important that I stress that at this stage you are being asked to feedback on suggestions they are not budget proposals. The budget proposals will be developed following this final phase of engagement and discussed by members at the special council meeting on 29 February.

I am holding further staff engagement sessions on Thursday 25 January and Tuesday 30 January, when I will provide an update on this second phase of the budget process and this will be an opportunity for any of you to ask questions. Diary invitations to the online meetings have been issued on Staff Connections, and the video of the sessions will be made available afterwards.

Questions / queries can be also raised through your respective Service too and this can be done via your line manager / senior manager / Executive Chief Officer.

I thank you in advance for your continued support with our budget engagement.

Kind regards

Derek

Derek Brown

Chief Executive