In the next few weeks, the City Council is facing some very difficult budget decisions. We do not have enough money to be able to set our budget.??

Nottingham is one of more than ten councils applying to the Government for ?Exceptional Financial Support? ? a Government phrase which means not that more money is granted to the council, but that permission is given to use capital receipts from sales of land or buildings to finance our day-to-day expenditure. This is a ?stop-gap?, not a sustainable year- on-year solution to our problems.?

Why do we need this help? A combination of inflation, which in the past twelve months hit levels in excess of 10 per cent, broken markets in both Children?s and Adults? social care where private providers can name a price and make profit from the vulnerable, and a greater demand for our services in both care and for those who present to the council as homeless, which has left us unable to balance our books.?

So, the proposals which were brought forward for public consultation just before Christmas are largely not things that councillors want to do but are areas that we need to consider in order to fulfil our legal duty to balance our budget.??

As much as we would love to preserve many of our well-used services, we are not able to do that in the financial situation we, and many other councils, find ourselves in.??

We have been able to change the proposals in small ways: money has been found to cover several areas of public transport spend with ?one-off? amounts of money so the Easylink service, ?real-time? bus stop information and our ?Park and Ride? sites are safe for one more year, and we have taken out the saving of the Housing Regeneration Team as we were able to show that removing the team would bring about more costs to the council than retaining it.?

However, our Improvement and Assurance Board, appointed by the Government, has given instructions to officers of the council that they must bring forward each and every saving that they consider possible to put towards balancing the council?s budget.??

This is a condition of receiving exceptional support from government. It feels like councillors are in a ?no win? situation.?

Today, Executive Councillors, elected once again last May, declined to recommend this budget to the upcoming meeting of the City Council.??

We decided there is little to ?recommend? here to the meeting which will have to consider the proposals put forward. But councils have to set a balanced budget, and on March 4 we will seriously consider our duty to do that.?