Sheffield Council stays balanced on the budget tightrope

Good afternoon readers — and welcome to our Monday briefing.

Last week, Sheffield Council had its annual meeting to set the budget for the following year, which included hiking council tax by 4.99% — the maximum rise allowed without a local referendum. This will be unsurprising news for most people, given most other local councils have done the same in order to set a balanced budget and avoid financial ruin. But how sustainable is its position for the coming years? We look at that in our big story below.

As well as that we have a night of folk music and storytelling at the Dorothy Pax, a new Sheffield music podcast, and one of the city’s last back to back houses up for sale in Neepsend.

Tribune members’ event

Thanks so much to everyone who came to our second members’ event on Saturday! The screening of miners’ strike film Still The Enemy Within at the Showroom was packed out. The film was an incredible depiction of the time, and it was great to chat to so many of you in the cafe bar afterwards: discussion ranged from why the strike failed to whether our articles are too long. We’re already planning our next event for a few months’ time, which we’re hoping will incorporate the great outdoors. Let’s hope the weather does its bit. More details to follow…

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Catch up and coming up

For our weekend read, author Rachel Genn reviewed Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at The Crucible — is it the doubling Sheffield has been waiting for? You can read that piece here.

Last week we sent out two great newsletters to our 2,081 paying members. In the first, Joe Ware spoke to two Sheffield psychiatrists who worked at Middlewood Hospital in the 80s about a revolutionary new treatment they have discovered for mental health problems — placebo and exercise. And in the second, Victoria delved into the final panic filled weeks of Sheffield law firm SSB Law which was until recently one of the biggest employers in Sheffield but has now crashed into administration. An extract from that second piece is below.

According to one former staff member, “the downfall of SSB Law was stupidity, greed and naivety.” Stupidity and greed on the part of its leadership, she alleges, and naivety on the part of its employees. “I think a lot of the staff were sold a very shoddy dream when they were brought in: ‘We’re a great firm, we have got two big buildings right in the heart of Sheffield, we’re very established with all these different departments, we know what we’re doing,’” she says, “but they didn’t have a clue.”

This week we’ll send out two more, including a piece in which Dan gets involved in a very heated debate in a Sheffield pub. To fund a new way of doing journalism based on paying members rather than clickbait and stories about celebrities, please subscribe using the button below. It costs just £1.34 a week or 23p a day if you pay for 12 months up front (£70).

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Editor’s note: As Victoria wrote in our members’ appeal yesterday, The Tribune is trying to do something different than most other local papers. For too long the boundary between news and PR has become blurred. The decline of the regional press has given carte blanche to marketing firms to get whatever they want in local newspapers. We’ve never reprinted a press release and we never will. If you want to support journalism, please become a member of The Tribune today.

The big picture: There’s a storm a’coming ⛈️

Sheffield photographer Ian Smith took this incredible picture from South Street Amphitheatre of a storm rolling in behind St Paul’s Tower. He also did a timelapse which is equally impressive.

This week’s weather 🌦

Our weather forecast comes from dedicated Sheffield weather service Steel City Skies, who say low pressure returns to the west of the UK encouraging a milder and changeable spring pattern to establish.

Monday ☁ Light northerly winds and little change in the sky with a lot of cloud. Chance of brightness later, but staying chilly with highs of 8°C.

Tuesday 💦 A warm front moves north and east, bringing cloud and the risk of light rain or drizzle. Light southerly breezes and highs of around 11°C.

Wednesday ☁ Milder, but with large cloud amounts. A low risk of showery rain, more likely to stay out west. Keen winds from the southwest with highs of 15°C.

Thursday 🌦 Staying mild and breezy with large cloud amounts but also some brighter periods. A risk of showers throughout, especially over the hills. Highs of 15°C.

Friday 🌦 Not dissimilar, with pleasant bright periods but also a scattering of potentially sharp showers. Spring-like temperatures with highs perhaps touching 16°C.

Outlook: Staying changeable into the weekend with average temperatures. Bright at times, but also the risk of rain with low pressure knocking on the westerly door.

To see the full forecast and keep up to date with any changes to the outlook, follow Steel City Skies on Facebook.

The big story: Sheffield Council stays balanced on the budget tightrope… for now

Top line: Last week, Sheffield Council set its budget for the next financial year. The most eye-catching — but ultimately unsurprising — element was a decision to hike council tax by 4.99%.

The good news: Given the number of local councils that have gone bankrupt in recent years, it’s a relief that the council was able to set a balanced budget and “is not at imminent risk” of going bust.

But don’t relax just yet. This is no time to rest easy, a report presented to all councillors warned. If the savings the council is looking to make don’t get delivered, then there’s a risk its position “will become financially unsound from 2025/26 onwards”.

Mind the gap: Over the next four years, the council is going to have to find new ways to cope with an ever-widening hole in its annual budget. In the 2024/25 financial year, that gap is expected to grow to £18.1 million. By the financial year beginning in 2027, it’s projected to be over £60m. (Admittedly, this is based on pessimistic assumptions about the amount of help the council can expect from the national government. The report notes: “We are prudently planning for very little, if any, increase in funding for councils over the next few years.”)

Pinching every penny: Over the last 14 years, the council has delivered savings totalling more than £483m, in a desperate attempt to avoid having to cut services or sell assets. But this tightrope act is only becoming harder and harder to pull off:

Balancing the budget for next year required the council to make plans to save a further £7.5m. Examples of where cuts are planned include redesigning some services to rely more on “improved automation,” reducing subsidies to leisure providers and “person-centred reviews of care packages,” which could lead to less support for vulnerable residents.
As reported by the BBC, the council has announced it will review 100 community centres it owns and maintains, possibly with a view to selling some of these buildings.
But the council acknowledges that “in practice” some of these savings “will prove difficult to implement in whole or part following consultation,” as residents are unlikely to be happy. If that happens, the council may have to dip into its piggy bank of reserves.

Sheffield’s safety net: The council is a pretty cautious spender, at least judging by the size of its reserves compared to its annual spend. At the end of this month, the council is expected to have reserves of more than £284m, although only a little over £15m of this are “non-earmarked,” meaning they can be used for any purpose. While the council’s reserves dipped by £16.4m in 2022/23, when it was forced to use a chunk of this cash to balance its budget, Sheffield is faring a lot better than many other big UK cities.

The report notes, with only a slight hint of smugness, that “this is due to the prudent financial management of reserves over the past few years”. It adds that the use of reserves should be saved for “one-off ‘invest to save’ type activity required to support savings delivery plans and transformational work,” rather than propping up budgets.

Spend money to make money: However, merely bailing water out of the proverbial boat will never be enough to keep Sheffield afloat. Last year, the Capital Strategy and Budget Book for 2024/25 notes, the council spent £190.6m of taxpayers’ money on projects to improve the city, on the grounds that improvements like building more social housing stock eventually pay for themselves. The document lays out some significant spends that are already underway:

Shalesmoor Gateway — the council plans to spend an estimated £22.5m remodelling the junction at Shalesmoor, which it hopes will “improve bus journey times and reliability and introduce access improvements to the wider area”.
As part of the Heart of the City II project, £48.6m is being spent transforming the Gaumont Building into a hotel and leisure unit. The hotel portion of this project has already been pre-let to operator Radisson Blu.

As the diagram below shows, housing and transport are the two big hitters when it comes to capital spend (“Capital spend” includes one-off costs, not the day to day spend on staff, etc.)

Bottom line: People often criticise the council but, credit where credit is due, they’ve pulled off a difficult task ensuring the city avoids the fate of places like Birmingham for at least another year. As council leader Tom Hunt told his fellow councillors last Wednesday: “Other councils are in a difficult position but we are not because we are prudently and responsibly managing every single pound of public money that we oversee.”

The Weekly Whitworth ✍️

Our cartoonist James Whitworth with his own take on our weekend read.

Our media picks 🔗

The Crucible at The Crucible 🎭 We reviewed the play on Saturday and the national press were as impressed as we were, with praise for both the central performances and director Anthony Lau’s bold direction. The Times called it “fiercely exciting and full of modern parallels” while The Guardian’s five star review described it as “a deeply affecting take on Arthur Miller’s American classic.” What’s On Stage said it was “a tense and compelling revival, despite the gimmicks”.

An example to be followed — or a cautionary tale? 🏙️ Over the weekend our sister title the Manchester Mill published a fascinating review of a new book by housing activist Isaac Rose. The book argues that Manchester’s success over the last 30 years has been too focused on private investment at the expense of long term residents. And it poses big questions for Sheffield as well. Should we try to copy our neighbours over the Pennines or go down a different route? Give the review a read and let us know what you think in the comments.

Property of the week 🏡

This former commercial property in Neepsend consists of a mid-19th century Grade II-listed building on Mowbray Street (one of last remaining back to back houses in Sheffield), a row of terraces on Harvest Lane and a workshop in the middle. It is on the market for £350,000.

Tribune Tips: If you want to tell us about a story or give us some information, please email editor@sheffieldtribune.co.uk. We are always happy to speak to people off the record in the first instance, and we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity.

Things to do 📆

Music 🪕 On Tuesday at the Dorothy Pax is The March Murders, a night of folk music and storytelling by Rebecca Hearne and Adrian Finney, a talented duo of singer and storyteller who will share their passion for the macabre and sinister. Expect a blend of haunting folk songs and true crime tales to keep you on the edge of your seat. Doors open at 7.30pm and tickets are priced £10.

Podcast 📻 The award-winning Empire Film Podcast — the podcast arm of the world's biggest movie magazine — is currently on its second national tour and comes to Sheffield City Hall on Wednesday. An Evening With The Empire Podcast is a live show that will bring you everything you love about the pod including hosts Chris Hewitt, Helen O'Hara and James Dyer as they settle in for an evening of film-related fun. Tickets are priced £20.95 and doors open at 7pm.

Science 🧠 Join Sheffield Museums on Thursday for an evening of craft-based activities and scientific endeavours in this special after hours event at the Millennium Gallery. From hands-on activities and drop-in demonstrations to interactive exhibits and workshops, experience the thrill of exploration through artistry and innovation. Crafts will include origami, painting, crochet and knitting, clay modelling, 3D printing and more! The three hour event is free and begins at 7pm.