Investment in Sandy and public finances

Central Bedfordshire Council is, like all councils, under immense financial pressure due to the increasing demand and costs in adult social care and children’s services. Our services are, in the main, funded by Council Tax. At a time when we are having to make difficult choices about increasing Council Tax and reducing services to be able to provide social care, spending £100,000 a year on keeping a largely unused site secure is not the best use of taxpayer's money.

We provide many services in Sandy including a care home, leisure provision, schools, a library, and a children’s centre. We have also invested heavily in improving facilities in Sandy. This includes £16M to transform Sandy Secondary School and provide additional SEND facilities, and £4M to re-provide indoor leisure facilities at Jenkins Pavilion.  There is more information on our Sandy web pages.

If approved, the proposal to build a new care home would commit us to a further £18.5M of investment in Sandy. 

These new facilities are all funded through our capital budget. The capital budget is funded through borrowing and selling our assets and reinvesting this money in facilities. The borrowing has an impact on our service budget too because the interest paid on borrowing is paid from the service (revenue) budget.

Any income generated from the sale of our assets is used to finance capital expenditure, thereby reducing our need to borrow. If the estimated capital receipts in future years do not materialise, this would increase our requirement to borrow and reduce the revenue budget to fund services.  

Due to the current financial challenges, the proposals for the former Sandye Place Academy site need to be delivered without further public expenditure.