County councillors have warned of “inadequate resources”, after agreeing a budget which relies on government-approved borrowing of up to £70 million.
On Tuesday (February 10), East Sussex County Council agreed its budget for the 2026/27 financial year, which included a 4.99 per cent council tax increase and new in-year savings totalling more than £3.5m.
Despite this, the budget still includes a £55.5m shortfall, which the council is unable to fund from its own reserves. In light of this, the council is seeking Exceptional Financial Support (EFS) from the government — a request to borrow as much as £70m to plug its funding gap.
Councillor Nick Bennett, council lead member for resources and climate change, said: “The review of local government finances, the Fair Funding Review, the business rates reset and local government settlement has failed to recognise the various pressures this county faces in meeting the needs of its residents.
“The council has a firm foundation of governance; sound and prudent financial management. This has been endorsed through CIPFA, recent Ofsted and CQC service inspections and the Grant Thornton value for money report that we published recently.
“We are seeking Exceptional Financial Support and we are not alone in this. This will ensure the valued services of this authority continue to be delivered.
“The report confirms the lobbying endeavours that will be critical over the coming year and the work we’ve done raise issues, including on how social care provision has not been met with sufficient income from the latest funding reforms.
“We must now move on to an outlook of inadequate resources over the coming years.”
Warnings about the council’s finances were shared by Liberal Democrat group leader David Tutt.
He said: “Everybody in this chamber recognises the very serious financial position East Sussex is in at the moment.
“I’ve had the opportunity … to meet with all of the directors of the county council, its senior officers, and I thank them for their time and the information they shared with me. It has just made me even more aware of some of the difficulties that we as an authority face.
“Having had those conversations my group and myself concluded that we don’t have a realistic amendment to move to the budget proposals and I am not somebody who believes in moving an amendment just for the hell of it.
“I think we need to recognise, as a body, that we are in a serious financial state.”
Cllr Tutt said his group felt proposals it had made in previous years — with the Lib Dem leader specifically mentioning the sale of County Hall and introduction of on-street parking enforcement in Wealden — would have seen the council in stronger position than it currently is.
But he also said there were no in-year savings currently available.
The Lib Dems opted to abstain from voting on the budget, highlighting concerns around the level of debt being taken on as a result of EFS.
This assessment appeared to be shared by the council’s other opposition groups, which also opted to abstain while simultaneously not tabling any alternative budget proposals.
Speaking after the meeting, Labour group deputy leader Christine Robinson said: “Do we really want to put ourselves into £70m borrowing when we are just about to go into Local Government Reorganisation at full pelt with a unitary council subbing that debt?”
When asked if there was a possibility of the government not allowing the county council access to EFS, Cllr Robinson said: “I will do everything I can — and I will speak to my MP — to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Also speaking after the meeting, Green Party leader Johnny Denis said: “Effectively, it is not our budget. It is a budget of necessity. It is a terrible place to be. No local authority should be in this place and yet it is the accumulation of over a decade of active defunding of local government.”
He added: “I can’t support the budget. I know why they had to put it forward, but there is no way I am going to be supporting that. So it is their budget, not ours.”
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Conservative council leader Keith Glazier positioned the borrowing as a necessity borne of decisions taken by successive national governments.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service after the meeting, Cllr Glazier said: “We don’t have any opportunity to raise the council tax above the 4.99 per cent that we regret we’ve got to do … therefore we are in the position where we are going to have to ask for £70m in special financial assistance.”
He added: “We have been warning. The evidence is still there from my letters of the last five years, that I have written — on an annual basis to government — telling them that they are not [providing] the amount of funding to provide the services that they expect of us, statutorily, year-on-year; so we have been using our budget and reserves to prop that up.
“There comes a time when you don’t have the reserves left, so government need to review adult social care spending and children’s services spending to get it to reflect the cost of providing such services.”
A closer look at the budget
When new cuts are combined with measures agreed in previous years, the council is due to find savings of £6.3m during the 2026/27 financial year.
Among a variety of other plans, these include proposals to stop paying term-time accommodation for care leavers who become university students.
Care leavers who are currently at university and eligible for support will continue to receive the same level of funding as currently in place until the end of their course. But care leavers applying for university for the 2026-27 academic year onwards will be impacted.
These care leavers will be eligible for a revised package of support, while also being supported to apply for loans and bursaries, council papers say.
Other measures include plans to review the council’s climate change activities and resources in order to find savings of around £65,000. A council report notes how this saving “will inhibit the county council’s ability to deliver the objectives of [its] Climate Change Action Plan".
The council intends to save £275,000 by ‘reviewing and optimising’ its winter gritting routes. The report notes how the council’s place scrutiny committee will be asked to consider any revised policy, risks and mitigations associated with this saving.
Other savings will come from staffing reductions in the council’s policy and communications teams.
