Welcome to the September edition of Core Brief. This briefing includes key information and news that we need everyone across the organisation to understand. |
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Contents
Cheshire and Warrington Devolution - update
Leader and Cabinet model
Financial position
Awards and accreditations
Staff events and workforce week
Cheshire and Warrington Devolution - update
At the Full Council meeting on 17 September, Cheshire East councillors voted to support the creation of a Mayoral Combined Authority for Cheshire and Warrington – a significant milestone in the region’s devolution journey.
This decision follows similar votes by Cheshire West and Chester Council and Warrington Borough Council, and signals strong cross-council support for gaining greater local control over transport, housing, jobs, and investment.
Following these approvals, work will now step up to establish the new Combined Authority – which could be operational by early 2026, with the first Mayoral election in May 2027.
The proposed deal includes £650 million in government funding over 30 years, to be invested in local priorities such as improving transport links, boosting services, and supporting business growth.
Creation of the Combined Authority will not mean the merger of councils – each council will remain and will continue to be responsible for providing important day-to-day services and setting/managing their own budgets.
Now that the councils have all supported devolution proposals, next steps are anticipated as follows:
Late 2025 – early 2026 - Government will lay an order before both Houses of Parliament.
Early 2026 – The Combined Authority is established.
Mid-2026 – The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill becomes law. The Combined Authority would become a ‘Mayoral Strategic Authority’ and receive additional powers
May 2027: First mayoral election
Visit the Centranet Devolution pages or Cheshireeast.gov.uk/Devolution to keep up to date.
Leader and Cabinet model
Councillors also voted to approve a change in the Council’s governance arrangements from a Committee System to a Leader and Cabinet system from May 2026. Work will now begin to design the new governance arrangements and changes to the constitution.
Most councils across the country operate with a leader and cabinet model. Cheshire East Council moved to a committee system in 2021.
The leader and cabinet system will replace the current arrangements where formal decisions are made by our seven service committees. The cabinet model will include a leader, a deputy leader and up to eight councillors in a similar way to national government where we have a Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and a ‘cabinet’ of senior ministers and secretaries of state.
This will be a significant change in the way the organisation operates. A member task and finish group will be established to inform this work. The Decision-Making Arrangements report for council included information on proposed design principles for the new arrangements (App 2, p13), and an outline task list for the work (App 3, p15).
Financial position
We have recently published the latest financial forecasting for the current year and for the next four years.
First Financial Review of 2025/26 (FR1)
In summary – at this point, we are forecasting spending of £3.1m more than planned and budgeted for at the start of the year (which includes planned use of £25.3m of exceptional financial support).
All directorates are now working on additional mitigation plans to reduce this gap.
We need to deliver the savings we have already committed to in the budget as well as any new plans and proposals to reduce the additional £3.1m gap.
At this time last year, we were forecasting a £26.5m gap on the agreed budget and had to work extremely hard to arrive at our year-end position which was £12m overspent before using Exceptional Financial Support from central government to balance the books.
If we were to fail to deliver the savings and other mitigations this year, the worst-case scenario would be an £18.7m overspend. So, we need to do everything we can to ensure we deliver what we’ve set out to do.
Medium Term Financial Planning Assumptions
We have also updated our forecasting for the next four financial years, in preparation for our new annual budget for 2026/27 and our four-year medium-term financial strategy 2026-30.
At the start of the year, we were forecasting a gap in next year’s (2026/27) budget of £21.6m. We have now updated this based on revised assumptions about demand, funding and anticipated delivery of transformation proposals. There are still a number of variables that could change, so the report provides three alternative scenarios – ‘optimistic’, ‘base’ and ‘pessimistic’.
- The optimistic scenario, which includes beneficial changes such as reduced borrowing costs, increased new homes bringing more council tax and use of capital receipts to fund transformation, would result in a £18.9m gap.
- The base scenario, which assumes no change from current forecasts, would result in a £33.3m gap.
- The pessimistic scenario, which includes detrimental changes such as delays to delivery of transformation savings, additional pay inflation and failure to deliver the additional savings of £3.1m this year (as shown in FR1), would result in a £62.3m gap.
Summary
All this means that we need to retain a focus on developing savings proposals and other mitigations to reduce the forecast gaps and remain absolutely committed to delivering the savings proposals already agreed – or find equivalent savings if our current proposals cannot be delivered.
For 2026/27 budget setting, budget managers are putting together a list of ideas business cases to help reduce costs in 2026/27 and for future years. Some of these will be ideas for the short term, while others will be bigger changes that take longer and help in future years. The ideas will form draft proposals which will be part of the budget consultation starting in October this year. later this year
Awards and accreditations
Well done to our housing and domestic abuse teams who have been instrumental in our achievement of the Platinum Accreditation from the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) – the highest honour awarded to housing providers for their work in tackling domestic abuse.
We’re also delighted to share the news that our occupational therapy team have been crowned ‘Social Care Team of the Year’ at the National Back Exchange Awards 2025.
Our parking services team were shortlisted for an award at the British Parking Awards - one of only three council teams nationally to be shortlisted for the Traffic Team Award, recognising their excellent work in project planning, delivery and collaboration.
Staff events and workforce week
Thank you to everyone who joined us at the all-staff events at Tatton on Tuesday and everyone who has been taking advantage of the many opportunities in this, our first Workforce Week.
The all-staff events included networking opportunities with colleagues from across the organisation and our staff networks.
We launched our People strategy and Staff Engagement Framework and had updates on budget and our delivery and improvement plan.
Colleagues also took part in our ‘World Café’ session – sharing ideas, exploring opportunities, and getting involved.
If you couldn’t make it, the slides will be available soon. If you did take part, please share with colleagues who were not there on the day.
Remember, Workforce Week is still ongoing, so check out the full programme here: Workforce Week
Feedback
If you have any questions, feedback or ideas in response to the items in this briefing, please discuss within your team and with your line management. We share the briefing with senior managers in the organisation ahead of wider distribution so that they can be ready to discuss the content. We will make sure we check in with colleagues throughout the month, across the organisation and at all levels to make sure people are aware of and understand the information shared, and to pick up on any ideas, questions or suggestions.
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