Medway Council reaches budget climax tonight
Plus former leader Alan Jarrett on the position the council finds itself in
Editor’s note: Apologies for the unusual double edition today, but it’s been a ridiculous week in Medway politics, and our regular schedule will resume shortly. Tonight sees Medway Council attempt to set its budget for the coming year, and we’ve got all the details on how you can follow proceedings. Further on, in trying to get an understanding of how council funding works, we sat down with the man who oversaw Medway Council’s finances for nearly a decade: former Medway Council Leader Alan Jarrett.
Medway Council’s annual budget meeting is tonight, meaning that the authority will seek to pass a legally required balanced budget. Until today, it was unclear whether that would be possible given their significant budget gap and lack of reserves. As a result, Medway has been on quite the knife edge, with the serious threat of bankruptcy facing the council.
Word came from on high today though that the government has granted Medway Council emergency borrowing powers. This will allow it to borrow the money needed to cover the budget gap and allow a balanced budget to be passed.
At least that’s the theory. While things should now be straightforward, it’s been a turbulent week in Medway politics, with two Labour councillors being suspended from the party, significantly reducing the administration’s majority, the Deputy Leader of the Conservative Group quitting their party, and other rumours circling the chamber.
As such, it could still be a lively evening. As ever, we’ll be covering proceedings live, exclusively for paid subscribers, via our Chat function from 7pm. You can access it by clicking this link or on the thread below.
Feel free to jump in offering your thoughts on this extraordinary week in Medway politics, and your thoughts on the budget itself. For the full experience, you can also read the agenda for the meeting here, and you’ll be able to watch it live on Youtube too.
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Alan Jarrett is in good spirits for a man who has just come from the dentist. The former Medway Council leader has been out of frontline politics for nearly a year now and has a certain twinkle in his eye that suggests that while he’s content with his choice, there’s still a part of him that misses the games of local politics.
We’ve sat down with Jarrett at the Ship and Trades in Chatham to try and get an understanding of how local council finances work ahead of Medway Council’s budget setting meeting.
Jarrett is clearly happy that he isn’t the one having to deal with it this year. Following years of his administration spending more than they had with reserves dwindling to the state they are in now, the process this year is more perilous than ever.
He’s quite honest that the obsession of the previous administration of maintaining the lowest council tax in Kent is “a good election slogan” but “it doesn't help us to balance the books.” According to Jarrett, the blame for this primarily sits with central government and machinations within his group, which stopped them from raising council tax enough, meaning that Medway couldn't have anything but the lowest level:
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