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12
Mar 2021
Throughout this week the Stray Ferret is publishing excerpts from an interview conducted with Harrogate Borough Council’s chief executive Wallace Sampson OBE.
In the final part of our interview, we asked Mr Sampson about the impact of the covid crisis:
Mr Sampson, the Stray Ferret has reported that the council faces a budget deficit of £10m due to covid. Are you preparing to have staff cuts?
It's been a very challenging year financially and going into the coming financial year it's going to continue.
Covid has affected us in a number of ways. Income has reduced from parking, leisure, Harrogate Convention Centre and trade waste.
Nevertheless, thanks to the fantastic efforts of staff across the organisation, we've been able to address the majority of these pressures through cost savings and containing expenditure.
We've also put a recruitment freeze in place across the organisation. We've gone out to recruitment for very few posts but we've instead used staff in services that we cannot do, such as leisure, and we've re-adopted them. We've made savings in the region of £2m and that's been a massive help to us.
We're probably going to be facing pressures into the next financial year. In answer to your question about losing jobs, we'll probably adopt a similar approach to last year which was really successful.
Wherever possible, we're going to avoid recruiting and we will limit spend to areas where spend is really necessary. We'll see if that gives an opportunity to manage the budget rather than making any job reductions. The challenge with job reductions is the effect on services.
What do you say to residents who are worried about the council tax rise that was agreed last month?
HBC's element of the council tax is relatively small in proportion to NYCC, fire and police. We charge £250 a year at band D whereas the NYCC element is £1,411. In the context of it, £250 for the year is relatively small.
If you look over the last decade, we've increased council tax by about 14% since 2010. It's going to £250 in the coming year but we were at £220 10 years ago.
Historically, the borough council has got a good track record in being able to keep council tax rises low because we've looked at a range of efficiency and income generation opportunities. We use those mechanisms so we don't have to pass on huge increases in council tax to the taxpayer.
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