{"id":58360,"date":"2022-11-17T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-17T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/?p=58360"},"modified":"2022-11-18T09:53:33","modified_gmt":"2022-11-18T09:53:33","slug":"our-budget-will-be-a-difficult-balancing-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/our-budget-will-be-a-difficult-balancing-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Our budget will be a &#8216;difficult balancing act&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"block_0ae546d7fb2ad9c9f21c016f31e8d1b7\" class=\"councillor-quote align-right other has-white-color has-black-background-color grid-x\">\r\n\t<blockquote class=\"councillor-quote-blockquote medium-auto small-12 cell\">\r\n                    <div class=\"councillor-quote-title\"><p>In reaction to the Chancellor&#8217;s Autumn Statement, the Leader of Devon County Council, Cllr John Hart, said today:<\/p><\/div>\r\n        \t\t<div class=\"councillor-quote-text\"><p>\u201cAs always, we will need to see the details of the statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have already warned that \u2013 in common with most top-tier councils across the country \u2013 Devon is facing a black hole in its finances of \u00a375 million caused by soaring inflation, surging demand for our vital services for vulnerable children and adults and rapidly rising costs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had hoped the Chancellor would spare local government the cuts he is having to make to get the nation\u2019s finances back on an even keel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHowever, I welcome his comments concerning his decision to postpone the introduction of the social care reforms and to allocate those savings to local authorities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd I welcome any decision that will allow local authorities flexibility with regards to potential council tax rises. I recognise though that people across Devon are facing real issues with the cost of living and I will not want to increase their burden any more than necessary.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis will however be an option to consider in our budget preparation when we will be faced with increasing council tax by more than we would like or potentially making deep cuts in services that are valued by people across the county. Unfortunately, we may well have to do both next year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt will be a very difficult balancing act.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t<\/blockquote>\r\n        <div class=\"councillor-quote-aside medium-auto small-12 cell\">\r\n\t<figure class=\"councillor-quote-image grid-x\">\r\n\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"small-6 cell medium-12\" src=\"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2022\/11\/Cllr-John-Hart-Leader-of-Devon-County-Council-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Councillor John Hart, Chair of Devon County Council\" loading=\"lazy\" \/>\r\n        <figcaption class=\"councillor-quote-description small-6 cell medium-12\" >\r\n            \t        Councillor John Hart, Leader of Devon County Council            <\/figure>\r\n    <\/div>\r\n    \r\n    <\/div>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[24,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dcc-homepage","category-democracy"],"acf":[],"featured_image":false,"category_priority":false,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2028-05-20 18:25:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58360"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58366,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58360\/revisions\/58366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}