“LOOK at the size of Cornwall compared to some of the urban districts and yet who gets more money per head? Not us!” Those were the angry words of Cornwall Council’s member for finance as the authority agreed its budget for 2025/26.

The council’s Conservative cabinet agreed to set a £840-million budget which includes a council tax requirement for the council’s own purposes of £441.379-million. It confirmed that the Cornwall Council element of the Council Tax would be increased by 2.99 per cent, plus a levy of two per cent to be spent solely on adult social care, for the financial year 2025/26 (an overall increase of 4.99 per cent – for the third year in a row – which is the equivalent to a Band D charge of £1,987.20).

David Harris, the council’s deputy leader and Tory portfolio holder for resources, slammed the Labour government during his budget speech, claiming that Cornwall is now millions worse off after the government scrapped a Rural Services Delivery Grant. He added that Labour was favouring urban councils rather than rural areas like Cornwall.

The meeting heard that there was a £8.4-million council overspend by the end of the third quarter of the current financial year, largely due to higher levels of adult and children social care demand. The new budget includes an increase of £22-million in the council’s net spending on care for adults and children.

Capital investments include £173-million to create new school places and repair school buildings, investments in appliance replacements for Cornwall Fire and Rescue, continuing to invest in new technology to create modern, low-carbon ways of working, and £1.5-billion on projects to support economic growth, maintain the transport network, and create homes and jobs for local people.

Cllr Harris didn’t pull any punches as he outlined how unfairly he felt Cornwall was being treated by the government. Recommending the 2025/26 budget for approval, he said: “When I presented the draft budget to cabinet in November for consideration, I was fairly content with where we’d got to. The budget was balanced, albeit after introducing some fairly heavyweight savings demands.

“That was on the basis that the Chancellor’s autumn statement had provided a glimmer of hope in the form of over £4-billion in additional funding for local government services. After years of every political group on the council standing united in making the case for fairer funding, I was confident – well, hopeful – that Cornwall’s moment had finally come and our proposed budget was a worst case scenario.

“Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The Final Local Government Settlement announced on February 3 unbelievably made the financial situation even more unfair and urban biased. Without any prior consultation, the Government repurposed the entire £105-million Rural Services Delivery Grant so the £5.3-million we’d assumed to get for 2025/26 evaporated.”

He added: “To add insult to injury, the government created a new one-off £600-million Recovery Grant. Yippee … it was allocated almost exclusively to urban metropolitan councils. We assumed we would receive at least £2.7-million of that £600-million grant. We got nothing.

“In the interest of balance, we did receive a larger social care grant than we’d assumed, but overall the settlement left us with something like a £5-million gap in our budget for 2025/26 that we – officers and cabinet – hadn’t expected.”

Cllr Harris, who has continually petitioned both the current Labour government and the previous Conservative administration for fairer funding for Cornwall, said: “At that November meeting I said the big question would be whether the new government would be more or less generous to Cornwall than their predecessors or at least retain the same funding ratios. We now know the answer to that question.

“We’re out of pocket to the tune of £6-million when you add in the shortfall in the money we’ve been allocated to cover the increase in National Insurance employer contributions.”

He said North Yorkshire Council intended to press for a judicial review into the government’s decision to remove the Rural Services Delivery Grant, which has meant it is £14 million short. Cllr Harris felt that Cornwall should back the move.

The capital programme sees an investment of over £1.9-billion to 2030. “It’s a big number,” said Cllr Harris, “but Cornwall Council is one of the largest local authorities in the country, based on population and geography.” He said the money would be used to invest in schools, building more affordable homes, enhancing community facilities and ensuring the council is “digitally enabled and carbon efficient”.

The capital programme includes £228-million of financing for Treveth, the council’s house builder. “It’s a big number but as Treveth is maturing, we’ve asked them to not come to Cornwall Council for financing but to look for external financing, in which case that £228-million would come off that £1.9-billion.”

Cllr Louis Gardner, the member for the economy, praised the “Herculean effort” made by council officers to keep spending down during a time of increased demand on services.