Strong and stable, says Council Leader Allen Brett

Councillor Allen Brett, Leader of the Council

​10 years of austerity, that is the shocking realisation councils such as ours have had to face up to.

Local authorities up and down the country are struggling as they are relentlessly forced to take difficult financial decisions. How to continue providing the services the public expect and demand, while having millions erased from their central government grants.

Picture a scale with money in each basket. It’s a grave situation, which we are told still has years to run. In other words, we are nowhere near out of the woods yet.

Some local authorities have fared better than others, with some spectacular failures reported in the media.

The obvious example which springs to mind is the on-going struggles experienced by Northamptonshire County Council. I, like most people, had a vague idea what had happened without a clear understanding of the mistakes they made.

Were their circumstances unique to them or are they issues we could one day face here in Rochdale?

I attended budget review sessions at the council offices in Number One Riverside all last week which looked at this very question.

I think it is fair to say that the mistakes made in Northamptonshire will not be repeated in Rochdale.

Thanks to our excellent and diligent finance team I am confident we will not fall into the same traps.

That said, however, we will still have to make some difficult decisions in the coming year if we are to keep on top of our budgets, so we do not suffer the same fate as Northamptonshire.

This week’s sessions are the first step along that path, a path which will hopefully see us navigate our way to a more financially steady and secure future.