COUNCILLORS have urged their senior management team to work to deliver budget savings after a near £1,000,000 deficit was revealed.

Maldon District Council’s finance and corporate services committee were told at a meeting on Tuesday that the council must save £976,000 to close a budget gap by 2021.

Savings of £98,000 will be required in the 2018/19 financial year, with further savings of £282,000 and £596,000 in each subsequent year.

Director of Resources Emma Foy said: “Going forward the council shall operate on a zero-based budget, and there will be no additional budget growth, save for the really extraordinary circumstances.

“Management will be making a number of service reviews, as we want to make sure they are cost efficient, streamlined and running as smoothly as possible.”

Adrian Fluker, of Southminster ward, said: “The principle of this is that we have known about these big figures for quite a number of years and we have certainly haven’t done much about them in the last two years.

“It would be easy to talk about the senior management platform, but as far as principles are concerned I thought that an organised authority would have the overarching principle that the chief executive resolves to identify our savings of £976,000 can be made between now and 2021.

“That is the overarching principle, we have to find those savings.”

Miriam Lewis, councillor for Heybridge West, said: “One of the biggest frustrations has been that we felt we had been making a budget and we considered the elements that were going to go in and assessed the pinch points but we have never actually delivered what we had in the budget.

“Members have refrained from spending in some areas even when they wanted to, and for the benefit of the authority because there wasn’t sufficient funds in the budget, only to find out there had been underspends.

“Had we have known that money was available, the way we spent our money might have been considerably different.

“Monitoring what we have set out to spend is absolutely key. Otherwise is not a budget, it’s a wish list.”