Council to ask for exceptional financial support

Cheshire East Council is to ask the government for exceptional financial support for the second year in a row.

The authority, which signed off a multimillion-pound cost cutting plan over the summer, is set to ask the government for support of up to £31.4m for next year and £23.7m for the year after.

The leader, Labour’s Nick Mannion, said the figures were “very much worse case scenario”.

The Local Government Association said it expects one in four councils to require emergency support over the next two financial years.

Cheshire East Council asked for £17.6m in exceptional financial support last year, but has not drawn it down yet.

The government has asked the council to submit a request by 13 December.

Mannion said the amounts requested made no assumptions ahead of the upcoming local government financial settlement, which will set out how much central funding councils will receive and is due in the coming weeks.

Sam Corcoran, a former leader of the council, said he thought of exceptional financial support “as an overdraft facility”.

Conservative group leader Janet Clowes said she thought of the support as “a mortgage because they will be hanging over the head of this council for many decades to come”.

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Reg Kain said he had an issue with the “ambiguity of the language used” in the report.

“I feel like I’m writing an open cheque,” he said.

The decision was approved with 43 councillors voting in favour, one against and 24 abstaining.