Latest budget figures published by Nottingham City Council show the authority is well on track with making the financial improvements needed to balance its budget.
A report to the Council’s Executive Board on 22 July gives a final budget outturn for the last financial year which shows it needed to use less than expected of the £41m of Exceptional Financial Support the Government allowed the authority in 2024/25 to meet a funding gap, instead using only £7.7m of the £41m.
Exceptional Financial Support, or EFS, is where the Government allows councils to use one-off money from the sale of assets to pay for day-to-day running costs.
The report states that a range of factors, including savings and actions taken by the Council to mitigate in-year budget pressures, have led to a net spend position at the end of the 2024/25 financial year of £323.5million, some £33.3m less than the total funding pot including EFS of £356.8m.
Cllr Ethan Radford, the Council’s Deputy Leader and Executive Member for Finance and Resources said: “We are ahead of where we expected to be at this point which is very encouraging. This shows that the plans we have put in place to get our house in order are working and we are delivering better value for tax payers’ money.”
“We had set a target of being able to balance our budget without needing Exceptional Financial Support from the Government by 2027/28. Given the action we have taken, it is clear we are well on track towards achieving that.”
“These latest figures clearly demonstrate that we have now become a financially stable council backed with a prudent level of reserves. This is at a time when more and more councils are ringing alarm bells about significant service pressures, particularly in children’s and adults social care, and homelessness. This council faces those pressures too.
“So we mustn’t take our eyes of the ball. There is considerable volatility in public services at the moment. We are still effectively overspending and needing to use Exceptional Financial Support, albeit to a much lesser degree than forecast, but we have good reason to be cautiously optimistic.”