Value for money
Guidance and data on the financial resilience of the council
Cheshire East Council has updated a key document to demonstrate its strong financial position.
Cheshire East Council is the third largest council in the Northwest of England and is responsible for delivering more than 500 local public services across an area of over 1,100km2 for over 370,000 residents. The budget to deliver these services in the period April 2016 to March 2017 is around £730m (with a balanced net budget for 2016/17 of £247.9m), which is raised from a combination of local taxes (business rates and council tax), national taxes (in the form of Government Grants) and payments direct from service users.
The complexity of customer demands and the size of the organisation make it very important to manage performance and control expenditure to ensure the best outcomes for residents and businesses.
Strong financial performance
The overall financial health, performance, resilience and value for money at Cheshire East Council is strong, according to external assessments, despite freezing Council Tax for five out of six consecutive years.
The 2015/16 accounts were signed off by the Council’s external auditors, without qualification, and savings are consistently achieved through efficiency, removing duplication of effort, making reductions in management costs, and planned programmes of asset disposals. The approach continues to protect funding provided to front line services.
In November 2016 the Council reported its mid-year review of performance demonstrating how the Council is continuing to manage demand pressures by reflecting a manageable forecast overspend of £1.2m or 0.5% of net budget. This is lower than at the first quarter review stage (£1.5m) confirming that the Council’s reserves strategy remains effective.
The Council has robust billing and collection procedures for local taxation this is demonstrated by high, sustained collection rates from its relatively high domestic and non-domestic taxbases.
Value for money - headlines
Council Tax Levels have been controlled and inflationary pressures managed:
Core Spending Power is below comparator levels – similar services are provided at lower cost:
Funding sources are changing to place more reliance on local sources of funding:
Further information
Page last reviewed: 01 November 2021
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