Duncan Hall, Corporate Lead Director for Finance at Ceredigion County Council, has warned that the council “can’t provide all services to all people”, and that the authority will have to “go back to basics” to produce balanced budgets in future years, with the medium term financial outlook giving him “sleepless nights.”
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00:00 I think the other important point to note is not to take a too short-term approach.
00:05 If I look at the report itself, the bit that I focus on the most and probably more gives
00:10 me the sleepless nights is actually Section 9, which is the medium-term financial outlook.
00:14 So I'm already looking ahead to kind of go in.
00:16 Well, it's a huge challenge to get through the current financial year and next financial
00:20 year, but it's '25, '26 onwards, which is the bit that started to concern me because
00:26 we've got to look at the medium term and we've got to look at how we become sustainable in
00:30 the medium term.
00:31 And that's not going to happen with sort of keep producing sort of 72 different budget
00:35 reductions every year.
00:38 That's not going to get us to the place we need to be.
00:39 So that's why the report in several places uses the term sort of fundamental re-evaluation
00:44 of what the Council's about and what we're here for.
00:47 We can't provide all services to all people.
00:50 We're here for the vulnerable in society.
00:53 And perhaps we need to go back to basics in terms of determining what we deliver as a
00:57 Council.
00:57 [END]