A council leader has said tough decisions will have to be made as it fights off a budget deficit.

Tunbridge Wells Borough Council was recently taken over by an alliance of Lib Dems, Labour and Tunbridge Wells Alliance councillors in the 2022 local elections.

Now after a month in office the new administration claims it has found the finances of the council much worse off than initially anticipated.

Council leader Ben Chapelard (Lib) has said if it continues to run as it does currently the council would have a budget gap of £1.8 million by 2024.

To counter this the council has created a three-pronged strategy to safeguard the authority’s finances.

These involve: reducing expenditure on vacancies, increasing income (car parks, crematorium fees, garden waste collection) and selling council assets.

The plans will have to be agreed at a finance advisory board on Tuesday, 12 July.

Announcing the proposals Cabinet member for Finance and Performance, Cllr Andrew Hickey (Lib) said: “We’ve been left with a pretty significant deficit by the previous administration, and it runs up to £20 million in aggregate over the next five years.

“We just about squeezed in our budget in the last financial year with some extraordinary work with our financial people getting covid allowances from central government.

“But next year we are looking at a deficit of around £2 million.

“We feel we need to act and safeguard the finances as a matter of urgency, we could’ve waited for the budget in February.

“But we feel that’s too late, so we’re doing an in-year deficit review. Right now we’re going to reduce our expenditure and increase our income.

“We got some income from council tax but we get a lot more from other sources, such as car parking, crematorium fees, planning.

“We’re going to have to increase some of those charges to catch up with the inflation which was basically ignored by the previous administration over the last few years.”

Most of the funding gap will be filled by an increase in car parking charges, which were last raised in 2017 and the council expect the move will raise £408,620 annually.

In most car parks a one hour stay will now cost £2, a 40p rise, while the biggest rise will be for all day parking, up 70p to £7.

Other fees expected to increase will be for garden waste collection, up £4 to £56, and cremation costs, up £25 across the board.

Cllr Hickey also said crematorium operating costs had risen by 100% in the last year alone and private ones would be raising their prices too.

Council assets most likely to be sold include car parks at Mount Pleasant Avenue and the Great Hall, and the former council offices at Gateway.

As well as an increase in cost for council services, Cllr Hickey announced the creation of a £100,000 community support fund which would be set aside for vulnerable Tunbridge Wells residents affected by the cost of living crisis.

This would be given to chosen charities and organisations, as yet undecided, who can use the money to help those in need.

Council leader Cllr Ben Chapelard said the new administration was not hiding away from the problem: “We have a focus on five priorities, and number one is the council’s finances.

'I was honest with residents within minutes of being leader saying we’ve got some hard decisions and choices to make'

“I was honest with residents within minutes of being leader saying we’ve got some hard decisions and choices to make

“The partnership is not vying away from fighting the council’s finances.”

“As a council we’ve got to help our poorest and neediest redsients and we think rather than having a bureaucratic system where you apply to the council, we should work with local charities who know their needs better than the council with the community support grant.”

Criticism from conservative councillors about the authority’s finances has been vocal on social media, with Cllr Paul Roberts (Cons) labelling the new administration’s rhetoric as all “doom and gloom”.

However Cllr Chapelard replied: “The deficit hasn’t been created in the last 35 days.

“They’ve been there for a number of years and they haven’t been dealt with it. They’ve raided the savings accounts to plug the gaps.

“I think the partnership is showing political courage and dealing with this deficit.”