Spiraling Debt, Interest, Inflation and Blood Money Payments will Leave Conservative County Council Plans Shipwrecked?

 

Massive changes to the way the floundering UK economy affects Councils will hit Northumberland County Council this year following its high profile release of news that they are going to embark on a £307M capital program in this financial year. Those spending plans may have to be urgently revised as they are no longer thought to be viable or sustainable.

The borrowing requirement (debt) of the Council which sat at £807M pre covid, will take the Council’s outstanding debt over the £1Bn mark and with rising levels of base rates will raise revenue repayments on capital debt from £21.4M in 2020 to on or around £37M this year and that figure may be revised if interest rates rise through the Bank of England having to raise rates to attempt to curb inflation.

With the real time effects of inflation on Council budgets, Northumberland County Council’s early projection is that the revenue budget of the Council is expected to take an additional £22M hit as fuel, energy and running costs soar through the mismanagement of post brexit Britain by the Conservatives. 

These levels of payments from the revenue budgets of the Council, that's the budget which pays for the services you receive as a Council taxpayer, will be heavily depleted and services both standards and quantity will fall this year. When coupled with the blood money payments made to the outgoing Chief Executive of the Council, Mrs Daljit Lally to stop all legal action against currently sitting Conservative Councillors you can see that the Council which sent out the nations highest council tax bills this year will want even more from you as we move rapidly towards the next Local Government County Council elections.

It doesn’t stop there either, as the ambitious and very costly capital program of the County Council must be serviced and managed using revenue funding and as we described above that fund has been slashed by circumstance and mismanagement of the economy by both the Council and its conservative Government in office and its hopes of raising additional funds from is residents have been dealt a real time blow as there appears to be no respite or help to be given to residents as the UK’s energy price cap could rise to an average of £3,840 in January, analysts have warned, after Russia further curbed gas supplies to Europe. 

The move sent wholesale prices for this winter soaring to all-time highs and means a typical household faces paying £500 for its energy in January alone. The latest forecast from consultants B.F.Y. is likely to put more pressure on the Government to increase support for consumers as 20% of the population currently sit in the new energy and poverty trap, a figure which is expected to grow massively this winter.