Column by Councillor Matthew Hicks, Suffolk County Council's Leader
Time moves fast in politics, and less than a week since Suffolk County Council agreed its most challenging budget for many years, attention is now turning to finalising our plans on how we’re going to spend the £752 million of public money available to us next year.
There is a powerful financial context within which we have set Suffolk County Council’s Annual Plan 2024-25. With people’s needs at an all-time high, and the Government unable to significantly increase public funding right now, difficult decisions have been made. But, once again, we are putting adult and children’s care at the heart of our plans.
Over the next two years, we are investing an additional £74 million into services that protect and support the most vulnerable people in Suffolk. I am talking about some of the most challenging and life-critical public services that people often don’t consider until they need them. These include protecting children and adults from neglect or abuse, providing education for young people with special educational needs and disabilities, supporting teenage parents, supporting disabled people or adults with dementia to live independently, and providing care for the elderly. This is where councils step in and do lifechanging work.
Due to increasing demand and costs, 77p from every £1 we spend goes towards providing these services. That means the rest (23p in every £1) is all that remains to provide our other services, which include: Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service, school transport, public transport, road maintenance, Household Waste Recycling Centres, tackling climate change, libraries, arts and heritage, trading standards, community safety and much more.
We are a well-run council which makes sensible and prudent financial decisions. In the past five years, we have saved £66 million by working leaner and smarter. But now it is time to go further, and £64.7 million will be saved in 2024/25 and 2025/26 - including £11 million of staff savings.
There is also another important context to this plan. In recent months, Suffolk has been hit hard by major storms and persistent rainfall that has saturated the land and caused flooding across the county. I have enormous sympathy for residents living in over 800 properties that were impacted by Storm Babet. We are determined to reduce the risk of this happening again, so we are investing an additional £10 million in drainage projects, bringing in additional flood investigation specialists to identify key causes of flooding and administering the Government’s flood resilience grant scheme for homes and businesses in Suffolk. This work is already underway and will continue throughout this year.
So how will we invest the £752 million of public funding available to us in 2024/25? This is where ambitious leadership is important. Councillors have approved a plan - and a budget to support it - based on our ambitions for Suffolk. Whether that is looking after our health and wellbeing, strengthening our local economy, protecting and enhancing our environment, or providing value for money for our residents, not a penny is taken for granted and our pledge is to spend it wisely to deliver the greatest good possible during difficult financial times. My administration will oversee the delivery of this plan and take the difficult decisions needed to ensure continued success.
There are exciting and important moments ahead of us this year. The Gull Wing bridge will open and provide much-needed relief to people travelling in and around Lowestoft. We will agree a new contract to provide library services and build on the ’Good’ rating our adult care services received from the Care Quality Commission. We will complete and sell our first Housing Joint Venture homes, open the new recycling centre in Haverhill, and refurbish the centre in Stowmarket. We will invest more money in continuing to make improvements to the way we deliver our special educational needs and disabilities services. We will start to change our smaller fire service vehicles to zero-emissions models and consult on the proposed devolution deal for Suffolk. We will forge ahead on developing our £64 million A12 Major Road Network project to support economic growth. We will invest £10 million repairing and resurfacing local roads in villages and residential areas across Suffolk and continue to invest a further £10 million improving pavements.
These are just some of the major pieces of work that Suffolk County Council will undertake this year. The financial times we are in are challenging for everyone, so we thank you for your support and we will continue to spend public money wisely and carefully for Suffolk.
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