Dorset County Council facing £1.7m savings shortfall (From Dorset Echo)

Dorset County Council facing £1.7m savings shortfall

9:40am Thursday 17th January 2013 in News

DORSET County Council is facing a shortfall in its savings target of nearly £1.7m.

The authority had been hoping to save £15million in the 2012/13 financial year as part of an overarching programme aimed at delivering £39million in savings over a three year period.

However, chief executive Debbie Ward told a meeting of the council's cabinet that - despite a significant progress to date - the council was unlikely to achieve around £1.67m this year and that figure was likely to be carried over as an added pressure on next year's budget.

That came after chief financial officer Paul Kent told members that the settlement the council had received from the central Government for 2013/14 was around £600,000 less than the authority had anticipated.

He said there was better news in terms of public health funding, which was granted separately to be spent in conjunction with partner agencies.

Mr Kent said: “The overall position is that the partnership fund is about £1.3million more than we had anticipated.

“We are currently in discussions with our partners as to how that will best be utilised.”