Councillor Denis Healy, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group and the Official Opposition at East Riding of Yorkshire Council has responded to the 2026/7 budget saying: “East Riding residents are being short-changed: we need honesty about cuts and realism about risks.”
Councillor Denis Healy issued a scathing assessment of the local authority’s financial outlook. He warned that residents face a “double blow” of reduced central government funding and a local financial strategy that relies on high-risk, unproven “transformation” schemes.
Addressing the council during the budget debate, Cllr Healy demanded greater transparency, urging colleagues to move beyond political rhetoric and address the “choices and consequences” that will soon impact the daily lives of every resident.
“Councillors have a duty to explain clearly what this budget means for our communities, not simply repeat headline claims,” Cllr Healy stated. “Behind the jargon and the 160-page budget pack are decisions that will be felt in our classrooms, our care homes, and on our streets.”
The council’s Medium-Term Financial Plan, spanning 2026/27 to 2029/30, outlines the strategy for maintaining services amid dwindling resources and soaring demand. Cllr Healy cautioned that the public must not be misled into viewing the current fiscal pressure as a temporary hurdle.
“This is not just one tough year,” he warned. “We are witnessing a permanent shift in how local government is funded. This marks a lasting reduction in the quality and availability of services, particularly for those who are most vulnerable.”
Central to the debate is the Government’s radical overhaul of how funds are distributed between English councils, set to begin in April 2026. Cllr Healy argued that the new formula systematically disadvantages rural and coastal regions in favour of urban centres.
“The East Riding is among the hardest-hit unitary authorities in the country,” he said.
“The system is failing to recognise the geographical reality of our region. Being rural and coastal with an aging population doesn’t make services cheaper, it makes them significantly more expensive to deliver.”
He highlighted that essential services such as adult social care, home-to-school transport, and support for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) incur higher “distance costs” in large counties.
“This isn’t an abstract accounting exercise,” Cllr Healy added. “It’s a policy that hits real families across our market towns, villages, and the Wolds.”
The financial figures presented by Cllr Healy paint a grim picture:
£67 million: The total funding reduction the council faces over the next three years.
£32 million: The permanent annual loss to the budget every year thereafter.
“Residents deserve the plain truth: this is a massive cut, and it will bite,” he asserted. “We are being asked to manage the fallout of national decisions without being given the tools or the funds to succeed.”
Cllr Healy reserved his sharpest criticism for the disparity in SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) funding. He pointed out that East Riding children are among the lowest-funded in England.
Comparing the figures, he noted:
Camden: £3,997 per child
National Average: £1,606 per child
East Riding: £999 per child
“The message being sent to our families is that they must simply ‘make do’ with less than a quarter of what a child in London receives,” Cllr Healy said. “That is neither fair nor sustainable. By underfunding these needs now, we are creating massive knock-on pressures for our schools and health services later.”
The Opposition Leader dismissed the Government’s use of “Core Spending Power” as a metric for success, calling it a “smokescreen” designed to hide the reality of austerity. This figure combines direct government grants with the money councils are expected to raise themselves through Council Tax and Business Rates.
“It is a PR trick,” Healy argued. “It makes cuts look like increases by counting the money we have to take out of residents’ pockets. It ignores inflation, rising pay settlements, and the fact that the Government has overestimated East Riding’s tax base growth by roughly £10 million.”
While acknowledging that council officers have produced a legally balanced budget for the 2026/27 financial year, Cllr Healy questioned the sustainability of the methods used by the Conservative administration.
“The budget balances because they are using one-off flexibilities and selling off capital assets,” he said. “Reserves have been depleted. They are balancing the books this year by selling off the family silver.”
The council’s plan requires £41.7 million in savings by 2029/30, with a significant portion labelled as “corporate transformation.” Cllr Healy warned that this places a massive burden on whoever is elected in May 2027.
“The financial risk doesn’t vanish after this year; it compounds,” he said. “The administration is gambling on delivering massive structural changes at an unrealistic pace, with almost no financial cushion left if things go wrong.”
He specifically targeted the reliance on IT-led savings, such as AI tooling and automated customer management, noting that the plan ignores the high initial costs of implementing these technologies. “You cannot bank the savings while ignoring the investment costs. You can’t have your cake and eat it.”
Cllr Healy noted that “transformation” should have been an ongoing process over the last decade. Instead, he argued, previous Conservative administrations used reserves to avoid making difficult structural decisions.
“If transformation is always scheduled for ‘next year,’ it isn’t transformation, it’s procrastination,” he said.
Cllr Healy also took aim at the local Labour group, criticising their stance at the last full council meeting when they voted against a Lib Dem motion to condemn the Government’s cuts to East Riding funding.
“Residents in Cottingham, Hedon, and across the county deserve representatives who will stand up to Westminster, not those who quietly wave through cuts,” he said.
Concluding his speech, Cllr Healy confirmed that while the Liberal Democrats have concerns about the budget’s long-term direction, they would vote in favour of the 2026/27 proposals to satisfy the council’s legal obligation to remain solvent.
“We will support this budget for the 2026/27 year for one reason only: it is legally balanced. But that support comes with a caveat of extreme vigilance,” Healy concluded. “The next two years will be the ultimate test. We will see if these promised savings are real or if they are just another Conservative instalment of crisis management.”
