New data released by the BBC Shared Data Unit has revealed that the Isle of Wight Council faces a cumulative deficit of £8.5million across 2024/25 and 2025/26.
This is significantly below the national average of £33million, although those figures are inflated by the exceptional shortfalls faced by, among others, Thurrock (£521million) and Slough (£339million) over the same period.
The Isle of Wight Council is also below the national average when it comes to planned savings (£3.9million) over the same period compared to the national average of £13.9million. However, this is again skewed by the different sizes of various authorities.
The approved rise in Council tax of 4.99% on the Island is above the national average of 4.79% but, even combined with the estimated planned savings, the Council faces a significant hole in its finances.
Unlike other authorities in even more dire circumstances, the data shows that the Isle of Wight Council has not approved using financial reserves and nor has it applied for exceptional funding support.
However, a large part of the shortfall can be explained by a £7.6million increase in spending on Adult Social Care which is not covered by funding provided by the Adult Social Care precept and the additional Social Care Grant from Central Government.
The Local Government Association said inflation, the Living Wage and energy costs were all adding to budget books.
Mike Short, Head of Local Government for Unison said:
“Council finances are in the direst of states. As the government tightens the squeeze on local budgets, services either vanish or are scaled down dramatically.”
However, a spokesperson for the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has said:
“No decision on funding levels for beyond 2024-25 in England will be taken until the next Spending Review, so these numbers are unsupported. Councils in England have benefitted from an increase in Core Spending Power of up to £5.1 billion in 2023-24 compared to the previous year, with almost £60 billion made available for local government overall.
“We are making up to £4.7 billion available for the adult social care system in England in 2024-25 and have also confirmed an uplift to the Revenue Support Grant, whilst setting out a core council tax referendum principle for 2024-25 of 3%, plus a further 2% for councils with adult social care responsibilities.”
The Council won’t worry about it, they’ll just increase our Council Tax bill again. We are already paying ridiculous amounts compared to the mainland. Then there’s the parking fees. It will soon be £2.00 per hour! They just hit island residents and visitors with cost, they don’t care.
They charge everyday hard working people while the wealthy get away free, if you had a yacht down here and a second home all you’d pay is a pittance on council tax.
It is not the wealthy who “get away free”, it is the non working freeloaders who grab every benefit going and contribute nothing to society.
Do not forget all the staff still working from home with their top of the range council paid for laptops and also their broadband paid for.
Bringing in tax for yachts, dog licenses and a community tax on second homes will fill that void quite easily.
Why dog licences? Most dog owners I know don’t cost the council anything at all. Totally unfair, how about a cat license, they’re responsible for leaving their mark on the pavement and road!
Dog licences were abolished years ago.
I think councillors salaries should be increased 100%, this would encourage them to work harder, thereby reducing the overall deficit, maybe reduce the cost of road repairs by closing down some main roads.
What a stupid post! Idiot!!
Really, you have not thought that suggestion through., personaly out of all those councillors that I have met none have the intelligence, ability or common sense to manage a multi million pound budget,most of not all or are in for there own personal advancement ,do away with the lot of them and for the same money you could employ a top of the line accountant who actually knows how to budget.
This is the root problem with councils.
You have what’s basically a multi million pound business run by amateurs.
It’s a recipe for desaster.
Not a problem in days of old when you had highly educated men like Sir G. Baring who ran the Isle of wight Council for fifty years and wasn’t paid for it. Men of that ilk knew how to manage men and money
It’s getting a little concerning for local authorities, they have already reduced services to near nothingness due to ‘climate change’ and those services they reluctantly still have to offer they now charge extra for on top of their council tax take anyway – double yellow pension fund line cover most of the island and car parking fees have gone up to the point of saturation as they claw more and more cash in to fund their net zero initiatives (that’s more bans, restrictions and fines for you to save the planet for the Davos elite) and of course pay for all their diversity and inclusion staff – deliver nothing, ban most things and tax to death whatever remains and still they need more – don’t you feel sorry for them
That’s mostly cuts from central government funding though.
The council doesn’t have a hole in its finances – it just wants to spend more than it gets
cut the ridiculous £1m a year on taxis for SEND kids for a start.
stop handing out money to every sob story that turns up here in a dinghy or from ukraine.
stop handing out money to all the other sob stories that are too lazy to support theirselves.
Just another set up to get us ready for another huge council tax rise and parking fees. And what ever else they can rinse us out of.
Council tax rises are still below inflation anyway so they are going more and more negative on the balance with every year. Effectively they are asking for less value from you than last year (but more money because money has less value now).
So are wage rises less than inflation, that’s if you got one
Get rid of the floating bridge – sell it for scrap. That would save running costs and admin, and nobody would miss it. We are so used to driving round via Newport now
Councils are just badly run and they all squander money on services they should not even consider providing. Should all be cut back to the bare essentials and managed properly. Massive cuts are needed.
And any one else looks for cheaper or at least 3 quotes. But not this council who still insists on using island roads at a extortionate rate. And the foot bridge in lake that got sent to the mainland
The mind boggles
Island Roads is part-owned by the council.
The only thing’s this load of numptys need to do is stop wasting our money !!!!!
Stop paying our council tax into their fat pension pot!!!!
Stop paying travelling expenses on the island!!!!!!
How many nurse’s retail assts get paid travel allowance?????????
Stop buying laptops and mobile phones for every member of staff.
Stop wasting money on car wash, do it yourselves, plenty of time in the day !!!!
Stop being ignorant of the general public……
Open your eyes and ears…..
Sack 50% of them, half of them are not needed.
And cut back on all the cars they supply to staff
Need more folk in productive age.
Otherwise we’ll always be in a deficit and services like social care will be let poor for it.
The problem is our own young population is crumbling and there’s not much to lure younger people from elsewhere – externally due to Brexit, internally (island-wise) with not many attractions in daily life for millennials or Gen Z… I guess they can spend money on buying a car and drive to Newport to have a non-alcoholic drink but… doesn’t compare with nightlife elsewhere, and it’s a solid litmus paper for attractions in general.
Instead we seem to be good at luring more and more unproductive age folk who are going to require more and more of the social care.
Is that why they are charging people 50 pence to have a p*ss in
Sandown.
Get ready for another Council Tax rise next year.
Stop Wasting money on works like the unnessecary Interchange in Ryde and
reduce the number of Numpties who are working on Island Roads
Many of them are being paid appearance money just to sit in their vehicles
all day.
Sack the 50 Highest paid Numptys who work at IW Council
Job solved.
STOP INCREASING OUR COUNCIL TAX
F.F.S
Don’t think the word work fits them at all! Good idea though, how so you fancy a job?
I’m sure there are plenty of other examples, but just two spring to mind immediately:
the millions wasted, and continuing to be wasted, on the floating bridge fiasco;
the three quarters of a million Pounds spent by the Council on a new website
These two alone would have wiped out the majority of the deficit if the Council only used some common sense and prudence in its spending of our money.
well if they were a bit more forward thinking. And started using some of their assets a bit better they wouldn’t have such a short fall. That’s the problem when you get people that think there good managing someone else’s money. What does it matter if you loose a lump here or there through bad judgment. They need to wake up and start earning from what they’ve got laying around doing nothing.
May be if the Council stopped wasting money,we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Roads we pay road tax,where has all that money gone? Not on the roads.
The chain ferry,the cist goes on and on.
Have you seen the old Chain ferry? Still looks as good a the day it was used, how about bringing it back into service!!!!
Thank you Tory voters, you did this.
We supposedly have an alliance ?????… lol ….
So just goes to show that they are all tarred and feathered with the same brush…
Bog brush !!!!!!!
Doesn’t make any difference they all think their the best !!!!!!!!
So whoever gets voted in same Sh–.different day ……
We’ll soon get another survey from this use less council of secrets. Explaining they will increase our tax, to give to the feckless and ensure that social service can continue to waste millions on 3 or 4 people for a months care.
Explains recent release of intention to charge people/ groups for using beaches for activities
If the County cannot be run on a reasonable income from local taxes and the present government funding then the council should resign en-bloc and let central government see if they can run the Island by direct rule on the same funding.
The Clowncil and the Councillors need to go back to school and be taught Economics 101 so they understand about Area under the Curve. If you increase prices the return goes down, conversely if you lower prices you will get a greater return. Parking price increases across the island have proven that.
Stop using my poll tax to take kids to school in taxis and you’ve saved 6 million.
Only another 2 to find. Job done.