Prudent council defends underspend

West Berkshire Council record underspend for last financial year despite "unprecedented" cuts and job losses

WEST Berkshire Council's Conservative administration has rejected claims it wasted millions of pounds making staff redundant after recording an underspend in its end of year accounts.

Angry exchanges flew across the council chamber at a meeting of the council's executive on Thursday as the council's member for finance Keith Chopping (Con, Sulhampstead) unveiled the final report concerning the council's financial performance in the year 2010/11 to show £1.27 million lying unspent.

The report showed the council had pumped millions into redundancy packages covering the 140 jobs it shed in the last financial year and those which run into current financial year, 2011/12, to leave a £686,000 underspend which it put back into general reserves.

A furious David Rendel (Lib Dem, Thatcham Central) tore into his opposite number Mr Chopping who had praised the finance team for delivering the underspend and said it was “outrageous” that the council had claimed financial hardship while axing jobs it had money to continue to fund.

“Many of those people have been made redundant quite unnecessarily.

“Would the people who have been made redundant agree that this is a positive result for the council?”

Fellow Liberal Democrat councillors also targeted the underspend, but were rebuffed by Mr Chopping and the leader of the council, Graham Jones (Con, Lambourn), who dismissed Mr Rendel's claims as “drivel”.

He said the council faced unprecedented cuts to its budget and would likely face more, and the fact an underspend had been recorded during such uncertain times was cause for praise for the budgeting prowess of his team.

“We put our case to the public of West Berkshire and they told us they wanted a Conservative administration. The electorate understand the position we are in and will not respond to silly drivel and posturing.”

Mr Chopping added that the redundancies would save the council between two and three million pounds over the next few years.

The adult social care service had the largest overspend of any council service once again as it came in £1.6 million over-budget, but a government windfall and money saved with a recruitment freeze and reallocated funds from elsewhere far outweighed the cost of this and accounted for the left-over cash reserves.

The report will now be presented to external auditors for review.