Clr. Bob Kilmister, Pembrokeshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Finance, has announced that the Council has no option but to publish an outline draft Council budget for 2020/21 without prior knowledge of the Welsh Government’s provisional settlement.

The Welsh Government has delayed providing all local authorities with their provisional settlement until December 16, due to the General Election.

The outline draft budget will go out for public consultation in December but the draft budget should be ready for Cabinet and scrutiny in January, said Clr. Kilmister.

“We will be setting the outline draft budget without knowing what our settlement will be,” he said. 

“This is extremely challenging as we know what our likely expenditure will be fairly accurately but without knowing the amount of Welsh Government funding we can expect.”

Cabinet will have to make a recommendation on the outline draft budget to Full Council on Monday, December 2. The agenda, including full reports, will be published online on the Council’s website a week ahead of the meeting as usual.

Full Council will consider the outline draft budget on Thursday, December 19.

Again, the agenda and relevant reports will be published online a week in advance (December 12).

This report will therefore also have to be published ahead of the announcement from Welsh Government.

This will mean that members will have to receive an oral update on the day regarding the Welsh Government provisional settlement and its implications for the draft budget, which is far from satisfactory, said Clr. Kilmister.

“The outline draft budget will be our best guess and I can say with certainty that the final budget due to be agreed on February 27 will be substantially different from the draft model,” he said.