DORSET Council has a new Lib Dem administration in power which will be keen to make changes – but how difficult will that be?

The council’s budget for 2024-25 was set in February and was largely agreed by all parties, recognition perhaps that there is little room for manoeuvre?

In short, our council tax and business rates are already in place for the coming year: there can be no second bite of the cherry.

Two big spending departments, children’s services and adult services, along with the associated school transport, including taxis and buses for children with additional needs, take up the vast majority of the revenue budget and are services which have to be provided by law, so have to be achieved.

Roads, waste collection and disposal, are by necessity, set at a predictable level with little scope for change.

The former Conservative administration spent countless hours trying to persuade central Government, their own party, that Dorset was getting an unfair funding deal and the Rate Support Grant, (direct cash from central government), was unfairly calculated and needed changing. The Conservatives failed to achieve any change in this area, with a Conservative Government. What chance will a Lib Dem administration in Dorset have without a change in power at the centre?

Although the central funding mechanism has not changed there were some successes with money from Westminster with a substantial chunk of dosh for climate change work, money which has now been spent; limited success with housing for the homeless and extra money for children’s social services to pilot a new way of working, which is ongoing, although the executive director of the service says the Government money is not enough for the work they want to do.

Much of what Dorset might want is dictated by central Government – either financially, or in other ways.

Take planning. I constantly hear councillors say ‘why do we bother?’. Time and time again a committee might want to take a certain decision, only to be told by officers, rightly, that what they want to do is against the National Planning Policy Framework, or the Local Plan, or both; or rules relating to Green Belt, biodiversity, flood risk, or something else.

Dorset Council is in the fortunate position of being asset rich. It owns land and property estimated at a staggering £500 million, including industrial sites, farmland and many of Weymouth’s seafront hotels.

Yet relatively little of this, over the past five years, has been sold. To rush sales, would devalue, and much of it can’t be sold anyway. Who, for instance, would want to buy crumbling Sandsfoot Castle overlooking Portland Harbour?

In reality the council is looking to get around £2million a year from sales, which equates to about two days spending, and even if it does achieve this Government rules severely limit what it can be spent on.

Changing the level of parking fees, especially in our coastal areas, will be popular and can be achieved as a quick win, but that ‘lost’ income will have to be made up elsewhere if the administration has any hope of balancing the books at the end of the year.

People might be expecting big things from the change in administration at County Hall but the scope to achieve core policy shifts will be difficult and, I suspect, ultimately limited.