THE mayor of Copeland is “confident” with council will end the year within five per cent of the budget forecast in a challenging financial climate.

His comments come as it emerged the council has suffered a 99 per cent cut in Government funding support over the last five years.

A recent meeting of the council’s executive also heard that a forecast overspend of more than a quarter of million has appeared in the first quarter.

However, finance chiefs at the authority have already taken major steps to close the gap which has been attributed, in part, to recovery work following a devastating cyber attack two years ago.

The interstate hack launched before the bank holiday of 2017 brought the council to its knees, locking staff out of several of council services, including payroll, planning and environmental health.

Independent Mayor Starkie said: “It is a huge leap forward for Copeland Council that we have the financial management and controls in such a good position and completely up to date that the information being produced is accurate and timely and allows us to make informed and effective financial decisions.

“Our finance team have done a remarkable job and I am confident that once again in what is challenging financial environment we will once again at year end be within five per cent of the initial budget forecasts and let not forget it is also a budget that had no cuts to services, below inflation tax rises and below inflation increases in fees and charges.

“This is a significant turnaround from when the council were making huge cuts but no savings, strong financial management has provided the platform where despite a £3m reduction in central government funding we have for the last four years not passed any of those cuts into our residents

The overspend originally totalled £833,000 but the authority has managed to offset this through additional sources of income worth £500,000.

The cash will be taken from the earmarked reserves, taking the council’s forecast overspend down to £333,000.

A report considered by the executive this week revealed that one of the biggest areas of expenditure was ICT business support needed to help the council bounce back from the cyber attack.

The council spent £269,000 on recovery work including licences of £116,000 and additional staffing costs of £90,000.

But there were also overspends in other areas of the council’s operations.

The base budget for waste for 2019/20 was increased by £270,00 to pay for extra staffing needed to support the council’s new recycling service and lower income levels caused by global trends for the sale of recyclates (raw material sent to waste recycling plants).

However, despite the increased budget the council has reported an overspend of £150,000 due to “lower than budgeted” tonnes of recycling.