Barking and Dagenham Council’s Cabinet agreed the latest report on the council’s finances at its meeting on Tuesday 17 October.

Like many local authorities, we are facing a severe squeeze on our finances. This has been caused by increased costs due to inflation, increasing demand for services and the rising cost of social care, especially in children’s services.

Councils like ours, with high levels of deprivation, are being hit particularly hard by these challenges. Demand for services is growing as our residents have faced increasing hardship and financial insecurity. 

Furthermore, the population of our borough is growing - our population grew by almost 18% between 2011 to 2021 – and there is an unhelpful time lag in government funding matching this growth.

We are acting to control our budget. We already run an efficient, low-cost council and since 2010, we have already made £175m of savings, but we now need to do more.

We need to make £15m in-year savings in this financial year, and around £15 - £20m savings in the next financial year (2024/25).

To bridge this gap, we are reviewing all our services and making sure we are getting value for money from every pound we spend. This includes taking a number of measures to immediately reduce our spending, such as a pause on recruitment.

We are also finding better, low-cost ways of delivering services, increasing income, and getting the best value from our assets. We will continue to modernise our services, find new efficiencies and drive-up performance across the organisation to provide the best value for money for our residents.

This is a tough time for local government and we will need to make some tough decisions over the coming months.

But despite the challenges we will continue to do everything we can do deliver the best for our community. In the coming months we will be working closely with residents and asking them for their views as we make some difficult decisions to deliver a balanced budget.

After more than a decade of austerity and repeated cuts in government funding, councils have less and less ability to withstand unexpected financial ‘shocks’, like those brought on by the twin pressures of inflation and increased demand for services.

We are calling on Government to recognise the scale of the problem and provide the fair funding we need to support the most vulnerable people in our community.