The Cornwall councillor responsible for finance has given a frank assessment of how planning for the next budget is progressing by saying "there's no f****** money".

David Harris, who is deputy leader of the Conservative run council, made his comments in a "report card" issued by the council's Cabinet reflecting on their first 100 days in charge at County Hall.

In his comments, Cllr Harris said:

"I was asked to comment on the first 100 days of a Conservative Administration in County Hall so I said, "there is no money" and was told a longer comment was needed so I said, "there is no ******** money" but even that, despite being absolutely correct, is not enough words.

"I will not gild the lily, after four years probing and questioning the old junta and being fobbed off with polite words and a cabinet who seemed to believe whatever they wanted to tell themselves I am not surprised that we are now looking at holes in the financial model going forward that are quite staggering.

"My job, along with the entire Cabinet and in particular working with our excellent Chief Operating Officer and her teams, is to look at how we balance the budgets. A start has been made with ongoing reviews of the council's entire operating model and also its huge property estate but this will not be easy and will require some difficult choices to be made.

"One thing of which I am sure, we will not shirk these decisions and we will not allow problems to be kicked into the long grass."

The Local Democracy Reporting Service spoke to Cllr Harris to find out more about the financial pressures at the council.

He said:

"It is going to be difficult – there are pressures everywhere. If you look at last year you could say that adult social care is a problem.

"Last year a lot of the overspend was due to covid and that was covered by covid grants. Among the pressures were people being pushed out of hospital, and that was due to covid and we did get some funding to help cover that.

"Whether we will get fully covered this year for the full extent of that cost I personally doubt."

Cllr Harris said that while covid was still an issue in terms of funding measures required it was not the only cause of financial problems at the council. And he said that while adult social care was the main cause for concern it was not a fault of staff in the department.

"I am not being critical of the adult social care people, there have been issues historically that haven't helped, but the guys in that team, in particular, are working really hard to get stuff to work."

And Cllr Harris said that while the funding of adult social care was an issue for all local authorities it was an even bigger problem in Cornwall.

"It is worse in Cornwall very simply because our proportion of people over 65s, I believe, around 18% compared to the UK average of 12%. It is markedly different here to the rest of the country."

However, the Cabinet member was clear that it was not just adult social care that was causing financial headaches and that almost all departments at the council were being scrutinised ahead of the budget setting for the next financial year.

"There is the new waste contract that is costing extra money, there are a number of areas where there are extra costs but no extra money. There are the issues in leisure services and the leisure centres, there will be a cost there, whatever happens, and that will be additional money that we need to find."

With the new Conservative administration only elected in May is the financial picture at County Hall worse than Cllr Harris expected?

"I have seen what I expected, but I hoped that I would not see what I expected. I didn't expect to see anything good and I haven't seen anything good, but I had hoped that it would be better."

He added:

"We are going through the budget process now and we are going through it with a fine toothed comb. It is not going to be easy to reach a balanced budget which we have to do, by law."

And he reiterated the council's current priority area:

"The biggest issue we have got right now is housing and it has to be a priority."

So will the Conservative Cabinet have to rethink its ambitions due to the current financial situation?

"At this stage, in terms of what we wanted to do, nothing has been kicked out. It is a problem and we have got to address it. What we are not going to do is try and ignore it, we need to plan to ensure that the council's budget remains balanced now and into the future."

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