Cumberland Council must make £60m savings in three years

A council needs to make £60m of savings over the next three years, including £25m in its next budget.

Cumberland Council's chief finance officer Catherine Bell said the local authority would need to "think creatively" to make next year's cuts, followed by £25m in the 2028-29 financial year and another £10m the year after.

Bell said finding the savings was a "huge challenge" that the Labour-led council could not afford to underestimate.

Conservative Gareth Ellis warned the council would be in the "same ball park" as neighbouring Westmorland and Furness Council - which recently warned it could run out of money - if it did not make the savings.

"We've got to think differently, and we've got to think creatively," Bell said.

She told councillors some savings would take time to deliver and a draft budget would be brought to the executive committee in November, with final approval expected in March.

The council is already working to deliver £35m of savings this year.

Ellis said he supported efforts made by the council to examine the additional services it offered, which were over and above what it was required to provide.

Director of corporate and transformation services Jo Atkinson said it had received less funding than expected from the government's Fair Funding Review, which overhauled how local authorities are financed.

"Fair funding has not been kind to us," Bell said.

A Westmorland and Furness Council report recently warned declaring a Section 114 notice would be "inevitable" unless it made £40m of savings in the next three years, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

A Section 114 notice is a formal mechanism by which a council's chief financial officer declares its spending is about to exceed available resources.

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