The cash-strapped county council is paying £80,000 for an independent panel to help it find more ways of saving money.

As has been widely reported, Hampshire County Council is currently facing a recurring budget deficit for the next few years, and the panel could help save £20m, according to the council’s leader.

As a result, the council requested exceptional financial support (EFS) from the government for 2025/26, which could potentially allow it to increase the council tax by 15 per cent – higher than the usual cap of 5 per cent.

Whether the council will be granted the EFS is yet to be determined. Meanwhile, all efforts focus on closing the £97.6m budget gap by 2025/26.

Despite finding savings due to a list of cuts reported during the last year, including a reduction in street lighting, charging for some rural countryside parking and reducing the Hampshire Cultural Trust grant, the council cannot close the gap through savings alone.

This is due to the increased pressure on adult social care, children’s social care, school transport and the impact of inflation.

All hopes vanished with a “disappointing” Local Government Finance Settlement from the government, which will only provide the council with an additional £3.1m.

Due to the council’s challenging financial position, officers have been considering what further savings could be made if the council reviewed every service it delivers.

This “exercise” has been supported by an independent panel of experts chaired by Rob Whiteman, the chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy until June 2024.

The panel report and findings have not yet been published, but they will be included in the cabinet and county council budget report in February 2025.

The first insight revealed by officers suggested that the panel’s “emerging thoughts” and “feedback” support the officer’s view that the council “has reached a tipping point” where “we are now unable to find sufficient new savings to balance the budget on a recurring and sustainable basis”.

Council leader, Nick Adams-King, said that in summer 2024, chief officers proposed the idea of commissioning an independent panel, and he was “a little bit sceptical”. However, he said he has been proved entirely wrong.

“They have done an excellent job looking at everything we do and providing us with various ideas and suggestions of different ways of doing things,” he said.

“It’s money well spent and was a really good idea.

“There are choices in that, choices for us in how we do things.”

During the summer, county council officers have been working on taking services to “core purpose”, covering 177 separate service lines to prove this exercise’s thought processes and outcomes.

The panel feedback also concluded that the Council is “well run”. “performant across its services”, and “has delivered consistently on its savings programmes”.

However, it is now unable to find sufficient new recurring savings to balance the 2025/26 budget “with a significant risk that in the medium term the council is no longer sustainable”.

Despite all efforts and the implementation of the SP25 Phase 1 and Phase 2 proposals, which are subject to member decisions, the council is now developing the potential Phase 3 savings, which have arisen out of the return of “core purpose” work and the “positive challenge provided by the independent panel”.

Questions were raised about the cost of the panel’s service.

Cllr Adams-King indicated that the council would not expect the total cost to exceed £80,000. Despite this high amount, the leader said it has to be seen in the context of the panel’s identification of potential savings of over £20m.

Director of corporate operations Rob Carr said that commissioning the panel was a “good deal” and a “proactive” step since if the council had government commissioners coming to the authority four days a week for six months or a year, that would have cost around £1 million for the council.