2 2024/25 Budget and 2024/29 Medium Term Financial Strategy PDF 64 KB
Additional documents:
Minutes:
Councillor Peter Butlin (Deputy Leader and Portfolio Holder for Finance and Property) introduced the item by thanking the finance team for their assistance and hard work in developing the budget. He noted media coverage of councils in financial difficulty and offered reassurance that
Warwickshire County Council was not one of them. He drew attention to the Council’s good performance on the Cipfa resilience index and the supportive views of the external auditors which were shared at the previous meeting. He then proceeded to set out the Conservative Group’s budget proposals as contained in the appendix to the published report. In doing so he emphasised the following points:
• investment of over £28m to meet the growing numbers and cost of supporting elderly citizens and those vulnerable adults who need help;
• investment of more than £8m into children’s social care services to meet the increased cost and demand for children’s placements; and
• investment of almost £9m in home to school transport to ensure services to mainstream and SEND pupils were continued in line with policy whilst being able to respond to the increasing demand and cost of the service.
• Making SEND a key priority and investing in helping many more children and young people receive the education they need within mainstream settings and investing in support for children with education, health and care plans to improve their communication, confidence and life chances;
• Driving cost reductions through investment in digital, data and automation technologies, adopting more commercial approaches to investments and continued support for investment that enabled buoyant business and household taxbases;
• Opening more children’s homes;
• Commence development of the Top Farm site providing additional housing and enabling a new school;