Thank you for taking the time to email me regarding the County Council’s budget proposals and specifically the difficult decision to cease funding to the Arts & Museums sector from April 2025.

Let me be clear, I absolutely value the contribution of the sector both to Suffolk’s local economy and to our communities. However, county councils up and down the country are facing huge pressures on their budgets, with a predicted shortfall of £5.2bn by 2026, as highlighted in the BBC report last year, here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66428191.amp

At the heart of this shortfall is an unprecedented increase in need for our services that safeguard and care for Suffolk’s most vulnerable residents. This year alone what we need to spend on Children’s Services has increased by 28% and on Adult’s Services by 14%.

These services do vital work, such as protecting children and adults from neglect or abuse, providing education for young people with special educational needs and disabilities, supporting vulnerable teenage families, supporting disabled people or adults with dementia to live independently and providing care for the elderly. In order to do these things, we need to invest an extra £74 million in adults and children’s services over the next two years, but this means having to make £65 million of savings elsewhere.

None of the savings we are making are easy and the £65 million is made up of 58 different savings lines, some tens of thousands in value and some many millions. We’re, rightly, looking at the council’s own headcount as part of this and reducing that by between 200 and 240 in order to save £11 million. Furthermore, for the first time in several years, we’re reluctantly having to increase Council Tax and the Adult Social Care Precept by the maximum we are allowed – 2.99% and 2.00% respectively.

To put the £528,000 saved by ceasing funding to the arts and museums sector in context, it would pay for one of the following:

• 12 elderly people to be in residential care for a year
• Home care for 35 people who need extra help
• 6 months in care for a single child who needs round the clock 4 to 1 care
• 12 months of funding for 6 adults    with complex care

These are vital interventions which the Council has a legal duty to make – we have no choice but to do so – and in order to ensure we’re able to continue to do so, we must make difficult choices about all other discretionary spending and other services and how we deliver them.

I do not dispute the benefit, both social and economic, that the Arts and Museums sector brings to our county. However, when we are faced with children that need taking into care, or getting those with Special Educational Needs to and from school, or keeping a vulnerable resident in their own home with the right support – we must act here and now. To ensure we’ve the funds to do so, it is necessary to take the difficult decisions contained in our budget proposals.

Please rest assured that the County Council still places huge value in the Arts and Museums sector, even if we don’t have the funds to subsidise it beyond April 2025. We have ensured there is funding in place to provide 12 months’ notice to the sector and will, of course, continue to work with them and offer project specific funding opportunities.

Thank you, once again, for taking the time to contact me and I hope this helps explain why we must take these steps.

With kind regards / Yours sincerely
Bobby Bennett

Cabinet Member for Equality and Communities County Councillor for Clare Division