Their warnings were bleak and frank – we haven’t enough money. Councils across Wales are responsible for a huge variety of services – from social care and schools to clearing bins and gritting roads, the list is almost endless, but the money to pay for it all is not. One council deputy leader admitted they no longer offer a “gold standard” of care, and another said bankruptcy remains a real possibility for Welsh councils.
They have more people to help, more services to provide, but with less money and less people to do so. Some of the services they provide are legal requirements. Those which are not, it was admitted, are falling to the wayside.
Four senior figures representing councils from the north to the south of Wales appeared in front of a Senedd committee to discuss the money they are set to receive from the Welsh Government. With a backdrop of 14 years of austerity they said even a better-than-expected settlement announced by the Welsh Government in December will not do enough. To keep providing the admittedly deflated services they are currently doing will require council tax to go up and money to be taken from their reserves, if they have it. Despite the settlement from the Welsh Government, a council tax rise of between 9.9% and 15% is on the cards in Wrexham, its leader told the committee.
The leaders of Anglesey, Wrexham, and Monmouthshire councils and deputy leader of Bridgend council did not hold back as they told the Senedd’s local government committee their concerns. More than one leader said there is continually rising pressures from social care. Money is needed to help pupils with additional learning needs and there is a lasting impact of Covid on school pupils, but Monmouthshire council leader Mary-Ann Brocklesby said resource in those two areas has already been “cut to the bone” and resources are “not sufficient”.
Wrexham’s leader Mark Pritchard said the threat of bankruptcy – something declared in a number of English councils but yet to impact Wales – still hangs over Welsh authorities “it never goes away”. “We’re on the edge,” he warned saying there could be as many of 15,000 staff lost across the public sector in Wales. “That’s what we’re facing now,” said Cllr Pritchard.
Bridgend’s deputy leader Cllr Gebbie said: “We won’t have the resources to pay our staff properly”. Wrexham Council, as an authority bordering England, loses crucial social care staff to England just 12 miles away because they are paid up to £6,000 more.
While representatives of three of the authorities being quizzed said they will not make redundancies, Jane Gebbie, representing Bridgend council, said the only reason they are not is because they have have 40% of their staff since 2010 and they have not been able to fill their vacancies. Her role is more a “managing vacancy management situation than anything else,” she said. “We haven’t the staff to deliver the most important services around things like planning which causes delays,” she said. Cllr Gebbie said the Welsh Government has intervened with an apprentice scheme to find staff to work in planning because the council cannot appoint staff under their own terms and conditions. They cannot appoint to their legal time in the chief executive office which means they can’t meet requirements to assess deprivation of liberty assessments – where people are moved to a hospital or care home in the person’s best interest. in a “timely manner”.
On Ynys Mon, the only way to avoid redundancies is to not fill vacant jobs. Cllr Pritchard said in Wrexham, they had recently tried to save money by asking who would take early voluntary redundancy, but only 15 members of staff applied and now redundancies will have to be compulsory.
“We’ve got nowhere else we can go, that’s why we’ve gone out to redundancies, and we’ll have to go again because when you have statutory services, which we have a legal responsibility, it’s the law for us to put the money into and deliver, the non-statutory services will fall by the wayside. They have to. “
There are gaps developing. In her evidence, Cllr Gebbie spoke about the Connecting Care programme, something billed when rolled out as having been designed to “deliver better, more joined up care for the people of Wales”. It is designed to provide access to relevant, accurate, and up-to-date information on patient care and treatment that is shared across health and social care providers.
Councils had been told they will be moving over to it in April this year with the existing system to be shut down. Councils were told by Welsh Government it would fund the move. Instead that has been delayed by a year something putting each authority “at risk”, Cllr Gebbie told the committee.
All councils also needed to move to new software containing all their social services data. Welsh Government delays mean they have had to tender for a provider themselves, and pay upfront themselves from public funds, also at risk.
“On every corporate risk register in every local authority, our Connecting Care digital platform is something we are working at risk with. We still do not have any acknowledgement from Welsh Government, who informed us they would work with us, and we’re still waiting. We’re all going at risk, because we have to, because there is a potential safeguarding risk across Wales for the failure of any of those digital systems,” Cllr Gebbie told the committee.
Every council is concerned about how much money it will have to pay after the UK Labour Government changed the amount employers have to pay towards National Insurance Contributions. Based on a £30,000 salary, these changes represent an additional £866 cost to the employer per employee.
Council budgets are being set for the next financial year, starting in April, before they have been told how much they will be given as part of a UK Government commitment that the rise for public sector workers will be covered by them. Cllr Gebbie said: “We don’t know what we’re expecting, if we could understand a minimum of what each council could expect that would go some way to helping,” she said. “We don’t know what is coming round the corner,” she added.
The promise of money for public sector workers doesn’t cover commissioned services, something raised to the committee. In a letter to the committee, Community Leisure who represent registered charities, societies or community interest companies described the changes in the Budget as “unexpected, unbudgeted and is deeply damaging”. “As charities and social enterprises all our members reinvest any financial surpluses generated back into their business and, ultimately, into their services. They operate on tight margins and have been hit hard in the past few years by the impact of Covid closures, the rise in energy prices, supply chain problems and inflation, and decreasing investment from local authorities.” For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here
In a report into councils’ sustainability published in December, Audit Wales said: “We found that reserves are not always used in a strategic manner”. When that report was put to the witnesses they responded by saying how important reserves were to councils. “We need reserves,” said Cllr Pritchard. He used the example of inclement weather, as demonstrated in recent days, when gritters are needed at short notice, or snow ploughs. He said gritting can cost up to £3m a winter. “Reserves are there for a reason, we can spend reserves but how do we then replenish them? Most years we can’t.”