The leader of Hampshire County Council has warned that cuts to non-essential services and job losses are inevitable as the local authority is facing ‘one of the biggest budget shortfalls in its history’.

The council must find £132m by April 2025 – a shortfall the local authority says is the result of Government funding cuts, rising costs from inflation, and the growing demand for social care services.

The cabinet will meet next week to discuss proposals for balancing the books by the financial year 2025/26.

Council leader Rob Humby warned the county council was on a ‘financial cliff edge’ and said that cuts would ‘inevitably’ be made.

‘For a long time now, we’ve been very clear about the huge budget pressures facing the county council by April 2025, and like many local authorities nationally, our budgets are stretched to breaking point,’ he said.

‘Since the start of national austerity, the county council has had to reduce its spending by over £0.6bn, but year-on-year, our costs have continued to rise dramatically because of major pressures that are outside of our control.’

He added: ‘While our finances are stable until 2025/26, our budget projections tell a different story after the next two years, when we could then start to see a move towards all non-essential spending being withdrawn, and inevitably some job losses across the county council.

‘As we have done in previous savings programmes during more than a decade of national austerity, we would endeavour to do all we can to secure any staff reductions through natural turnover, limiting the need for redundancies wherever possible.’

If this article was of interest, then check out our features, 'Preventing future Section 114 notices', 'How to fix local government finance', and 'Budgetary Breaking Point: Learning from Birmingham’s mistakes'.