Budget consultation event

Dear Colleague,

We are working on our budget for next year and looking ahead to be prepared for further national cuts.

We are holding a series of meetings to discuss how we can balance the budget and work more effectively and efficiently; we are holding one of our meetings in St Austell and you are welcome to attend.

Please help us to promote the event in your community by sharing this email and displaying the attached poster.

We would like to help the public to understand the challenging task the Council is facing in delivering services with less and less money.

The funding that we receive from the Government has been substantially reduced over the last four years; this along with changes we have made to become more efficient, means we have already made savings of £170million.

Although we have managed to make the necessary savings with minimal impact to public services, frozen Council tax for three years, the further cuts mean we now face stark challenges. Some of our services are already under tremendous pressure to be able to meet demand with the reduced funds available to them.

We need to save a further £196million by 2019, including £24million in 2014/15 to balance the budget

From April next year we face having to reduce the amount we spend and inevitably there will have to be changes and reductions to the services we provide. We have to decide where and how we make the necessary changes and reductions in our services or increase income.

We want to hear from partners, local residents and businesses.

We are holding budget consultation public meetings in each of our 19 community network areas between 5 September and 10 October.

Watch my budget video

We hope you will be able to attend one of our events to join me to hear about and discuss our current and future budget challenges.

More information about our budget events is available on our website www.cornwall.gov.uk/cornwallbudget

Councillor Alex Folkes

Cornwall Council Portfolio holder for Finance and Resources