A maximum council tax rise is being considered by Cambridgeshire County Council, but the authority still needs to find £2million more to bridge its funding gap. 

The county council is proposing increasing its share of council tax by 4.99 per cent, which would see a Band D household pay £76.95 more a year to the authority. Two-per cent of the increase is dedicated towards funding adult social care services. 

A report published by the county council said it was having a funding gap of £74.2million next year. 

Taking into account a maximum council tax increase, the authority has said this would still leave a gap of £43.3million. 

The county council is proposing to plug this hole through using £6.5million of its reserves, and finding an additional £17.2million of income from grant, fees and charges. 

The authority has also identified £17.6million of savings it is proposing to make, but this still leaves the county council with a £2million funding gap for next year if nothing changes. 

The leadership said it will not know how much funding it will receive from central government until next week, but said it is hoping it will include additional funding to plug the remaining gap. 

Leader of the county council, Cllr Lucy Nethsingha, said she had “everything crossed” there would be positive news about other grant funding. 

She said it would be “extremely difficult to squeeze any more savings from core services” and said using more reserves would be a “last resort”. 

The deputy leader, Cllr Elisa Meschini, said even if the authority used more of its reserves to plug this gap, it would still face the problem of needing to find that money in future years. 

She said the authority’s services had been “cut to the bone” and said: “It would be extremely hard to cut fat, we are removing muscle at the moment”. 

Cllr Meschini added that running down reserves to ‘feed the baseline budget’ was also how other councils in the country had folded. 

Some of the proposed savings currently include £1.5million from reducing the amount of office space the county council uses, and looking to save £2million from the amount it spends on high cost children’s placements. 

The county council is also looking to save £10million from its adults and health budget and said it will be looking at ways to “manage future demand for services”. 

Cllr Nethsingha said she did not want to increase council tax by the maximum amount, but due to the pressures facing the authority she said they “have nowhere else to go”. 

She encouraged anyone concerned about the increase to look into whether they qualify for council tax reduction schemes implemented by district councils for people on low incomes. 

She recognised they did vary between districts, but said some offered a complete council tax discount for people “in the most difficult circumstances”. 

Cllr Nethsingha said the county council itself is also working on a project to help make sure people on lower incomes were receiving all of the support they are entitled to, as she said there are many people who are not. 

The county council is also proposing to invest £3million to continue the holiday food voucher scheme for children eligible for free school meals, and is looking to invest £2.2million in anti-poverty work in the county. 

Stephen Moir, chief executive of the county council, said this funding was being proposed to continue work currently funded by the central government, which he said they believe is due to end next year. 

The county council is also proposing to invest £23million in improving roads and footpaths across the county. 

The authority is also proposing to invest £57million to maintain and improve its adult and children’s social care services. 

Councillors will meet next week to discuss these proposals at the strategy, resources and performance committee on December 19. 

After the meeting a consultation on the budget is due to be launched to give people the chance to share their views on the plans. 

Looking ahead to the coming years, the leadership admitted they had concerns about the county council’s long term sustainability. 

Cllr Nethsingha said: “I think there is huge concern, not only in Cambridgeshire but across the whole of the local government sector, about how sustainable our budgets are for coming years. 

“I think there is not much question really that either there needs to be some rethinking at government level about how our income comes in and what it is made up of, or what services we are expected to deliver. 

“At the moment we are squeezed between very little flexibility in terms of our income and extremely high expectations and legal requirements about what we have to deliver. 

“If you look at the rising costs of children’s social care in particular, also home to school transport, we have statutory obligations to provide for them, but the income is not keeping up with it. 

“Cambridgeshire is in that picture, we are not in front of the pack of people’s budgets not being sustainable next year, or the year after, but we will be in that position at some point if that does not change.” 

Cllr Meschini said the county council was “severely underfunded” for the number of people in the area and the demand for its services. 

Mr Moir said the Treasury had once again recommended for councils to use their reserves to balance the books this year, but said this was not sustainable. 

He said: “I think the government applies a very simplistic approach to reserves, the vast majority of reserves are held for specific reasons, they are not a general fund, there are specifically allocated reserves. 

“The Treasury looks at the bottom line to see reserves the council has available. 

“[The government] are encouraging us again to use reserves to balance the books, the government is not helping perpetuate sustainable funding in their approach.”