Northumberland County Council's wide-ranging savings programme is running behind schedule, a leading councillor has admitted. The BEST programme is designed to modernise council services and make them more efficient, delivering significant savings in the process.
Shortfall expected
At Wednesday's meeting of the council's corporate services and economic growth scrutiny committee, cabinet member for finance Coun Nick Oliver warned progress was being slower than expected. BEST is targeting savings of £60 million by 2029, and those savings are vital for the council to deliver balanced budgets.
Coun Oliver was presenting a report that predicts the council will overspend on its budget by £7.9 million. However, as the Local Democracy Reporting Service has previously reported, this is common for this time of year and usually resolved by the end of the financial year.
Savings figures
Figures show that the council targeted a £12.7 million saving in 2026/27, but is only expecting to deliver £8.8 million - a shortfall of £3.9 million. This is added to a shortfall of £6.1 million brought forward from previous years, totalling £10.1 million overall.
Coun Oliver said: "One of the big areas we're behind is BEST savings. We're confident that we will be able to achieve them, but it is taking longer than we thought."
"This will be offset by the usual slippage in the capital programme. We're very focused on trying to deliver savings as quickly as possible, but we must do it so the wheels don't fall off the services."
Council response
"It is really important to get the pace right. There's a lot of work that we're doing to move away from the external consulting models and build up our internal capacity so continued efficiency becomes business as usual."
"The pressures on council budgets are going to be here for a long time. We heard a lot about social care in the Prime Minister's speech, but he's talking about a ten-year plan."
Reform's Coun Trevor Austin questioned whether the council was 'expecting too much' from BEST. He added: "It's working, but we're hanging our hopes on it. It's hard to keep saving money every day."
Coun Oliver replied: "I don't think we're expecting too much, but I think we were optimistic in terms of the time it takes to deliver. You can't do it all at once, this is quite significant change and it is a small team."
"I'm comfortable that we will achieve our targets, but I'm not sure we will achieve them in the month that we expected to."
