By Carmelo Garcia – Local Democracy Reporter
A row has broken out between Shire Hall’s former Conservative leader and the new Liberal Democrat chief amid claims the public has been misled over a “£17m black hole” in its finances.
Gloucestershire County Council’s new Lib Dem administration announced its revenue budget plans for next year which is expected to be in the region of £697.5m and includes an extra £15m towards highways.
However, Council Leader Lisa Spivey’s (LD, South Cerney) claims they inherited a £17m hole in their finances from the Tories have been blasted as misleading.
Conservative group leader Stephen Davies (Hardwicke and Severn) says finance officers have not been able to confirm the figure and he has emailed Cllr Spivey and lodged a complaint.
He said: “What do Lisa Spivey and Rachel Reeves have in common?
“The answer is they both misled the public before publishing their budgets.
“We know the story of Rachel Reeves but Lisa Spivey’s claim of a £17m ‘black hole’ is completely false.
“When asked, officers have not been able to confirm this number, and I emailed Lisa Spivey on November 25 but got no reply and have consequently made a complaint to the monitoring officer.
“We set a cost saving target of £10m which was a target of 1.5 per cent.”
Councillor Spivey said in response they were faced with a starting point of closing a funding gap of at least £17m when they took the helm at Shire Hall.
“We inherited a budget with built in £10million of ‘savings targets’ plus £5.7million of ‘benefit realisation targets’ which in plain English means over £15million of money to lose,” she said.
“We have been further challenged this year by the government’s Fairer Funding Review which has at its core the ambition to move money around the country and support those areas with the highest deprivation.
“Initial modelling suggests that counties like Gloucestershire will lose out to the tune of at least £2million.
“This gave us a starting point of closing a gap of at least £17million.
“We have done that, and created headroom of £15million to invest in fixing our roads which was a key manifesto pledge.
“We await the final settlement from the Government, expected late next week, but at this point we remain confident about this budget and its ability to deliver on our priorities on roads, care, supporting communities and boosting our local economy.”