Major change to the way Arun decides its budget is coming soon

The local authority has made decisions based on the ‘leader and cabinet’ model since 2001 but that changed in May this year when ADC switched to a committee system.

This means that decisions are now made by balanced committees where membership reflects the overall political makeup of the council.

Ultimately, this will affect the way in which the council’s annual budget and spending priorities are decided.

During a meeting of the corporate performance and policy committee on Wednesday (September 1) members were told how this might work in future.

Each of the six ‘service committees’ will consider the budget for 2022-2023 starting this autumn. This includes the corporate performance and policy committee which will discuss the budget next year before it is approved by the special council in February 2022.

Chief executive of ADC, Nigel Lynn, said: “All the committees can come forward with ideas on how the budget should be different but obviously we need to look at trying to minimise any growth or ideally have no growth whatsoever.

“It’s a pretty tight timetable I have to say. It’s our first time of doing this and I think ideally we would have started a little bit earlier. We will do this next year.”