What consideration has the Minister given to encouraging local councils to commit a greater quantity of their usable financial reserves before being permitted to introduce greater taxes on their constituents?
Responsibility for setting a council’s budget, including the use of reserves and decisions about council tax, lie with its elected members. This is an essential aspect of local democracy and is an important part of the autonomy and flexibility given to local authorities in Wales to assist them in managing their resources.
The level of local authority reserves is also a matter for elected members and will reflect longer term plans as well as managing shorter term pressures. I have discussed reserves with local authority leaders as part of our ongoing discussions on pressures and funding. They have stressed that they are already using reserves to manage their current pressures and expect to have to continue to do so next year. Overall local authorities, through their statistical returns, are forecasting the use of £193m of reserves in 2023-24, which represents an increase of 41% on the previous year.