A Powys County Council finance chief has warned that it is getting increasingly more difficult to find budget savings each year.

A meeting of Powys County Council’s Cabinet on 29 July heard the council posted a £5.3 million surplus at the end of March on its £341.6 million budget.

This is long way from the doom and gloom of a £3.938 million deficit prediction that was made at the end of last September.

And a massive improvement on the £894,000 surplus the council was predicting at the end of last December.

But the report does point out that the council failed to deliver on its cost reduction target.

The report said that £8.9 million in savings and cuts were made during the year against an initial target of £10.7 million, which rose to £12.9 million when undelivered savings from previous years were added to it.

A further £1.2 million had been achieved through “temporary mitigation” which means that a total of undelivered savings stood at £2.7 million last year.

Over £3.7 million worth of savings and cuts have been rolled over and will be added to the £12.3 million in cost reductions that are expected to be made this year.

Finance portfolio holder Cllr David Thomas said: “If I can make one point on the savings, it’s certainly seen a downward turn from previous years when we improved our savings delivery quite substantially.

“I think it’s worth noting that this reflects how difficult it is to achieved savings, because we have already lost £85 million from our budget over the last five years and £120 million over the last 10 years.

“It really underlines the fact that Sustainable Powys is absolutely essential to this authority moving forward.”