Stoke-on-Trent City Council has announced a major focus on reducing internal costs by making staffing changes as part of its draft budget proposals for 2026/27.
Frontline services and some key projects that help residents will be protected despite the council facing an initial savings requirement of £31.2 million for the financial year.
£9.8 million of budget management actions and ‘non-consult savings’ have been detailed in the draft budget proposal released yesterday afternoon.
The budget includes a proposed council tax increase of 4.99 per cent. For a Band A property, which represents the majority of homes in the city, this equates to approximately £1.09 per week. The authority says the city has ‘by far’ the lowest council tax in Staffordshire and the fifth lowest average council tax bill in the country.
The city council plans to ask the Government for a further £10.5 million in exceptional financial support (EFS) address the children’s social care pressures, protect its financial resilience and maintain adequate levels of strategic reserves.
Investments will be made into ‘people’s priorities’ such as cleaning gullies, tackling fly-tipping and doubling the number of empty homes brought back into use as affordable housing.
But measures to reduce internal costs will see the total number of occupied full-time equivalent posts across the local authority reduced by 13.9 during the next financial year. Affected staff members were told yesterday.
The council has said it will seek to avoid or minimise redundancies by creating alternative posts, advertising vacant posts internally wherever appropriate, minimising the use of agency staff and consultants, and deleting further vacant posts where available.
The jobs are not connected to frontline services, but the areas where they are based are not being disclosed as part of the public consultation.
However, council leader Jane Ashworth has told Daily Focus that five of the posts involved work that the DWP is now doing and she is hopeful that those affected will find other roles within the authority.
And a digital transformation programme, which includes the use of AI to achieve better results and more efficient, effective ways of working, is also underway.
Councillor Ashworth has put the budget pressures down to the ‘legacy of over a decade of austerity cuts.’
She said: “I’m hoping that businesses will recognise that we are improving our city and improving the quality of life for people in our city too.
“This is a vastly better settlement than we have had over the past decade or more. That’s allowing us to change the budget priorities so that we are no longer making proposals like the previous administration did for instance cutting street cleaning, abolishing meals on wheels and cutting addiction services.
“Instead, we’re making a financial adjustment so that we can invest more efficiently and effectively.”
She added: “Reducing internal costs is remains something very important to us. I’m not embarrassed to say that we are pleased we’ve never made anybody compulsorily redundant so the 14 posts that we’re deleting in this budget round, I’m very hopeful that the postholders will be found other jobs.”
Protected services include the Money MOT scheme which has already helped around 8,000 residents access £4.2 million in benefits they were entitled to but not claiming.
Investments in transport will include bus service improvements and road maintenance.
And the council says it will maintain a strong focus on heritage protection and reuse through its capital programme, with planned work including safeguarding the Wedgwood Institute and Chatterley Whitfield, the continued regeneration of the Spode site, repairing historic markets and muscular enforcement against private owners who are not looking after historic buildings.
Public consultation on the draft budget will run until 9 February.
More information, including on how residents can have their say, can be found this link.
The proposals will be discussed at scrutiny and cabinet meetings before being presented to full council for approval on 26 February.
