15/09/2025
It’s always good to be at Bovey Tracey Town Council meetings to exchange updates. We had a good catch-up this evening.
I updated the town council on the last busy few months behind the scenes at Teignbridge as, even as opposition councillors, we do what we can to keep the council functioning and try to get it delivering for residents.
The Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) Group is back up and running.
Teignbridge is due to run out of its reserves to use in its revenue budget – the one that funds day-to-day spending – at the end of the 2027/28 financial year. At that point, the government would have to step in and take control of its finances and would likely quickly close down non-essential activities in a hurry to get things under control.
The MTFP group, which I vice-chair, is seeking to find ways to prevent this.
Our work is progressing, with areas of the budget identified for closer focus and workstreams underway on those areas. Individual councillors are gathering data from departments in the council and crunching through it to produce ideas.
As well as the revenue budget, the council also has a capital budget, which funds infrastructure, local amenities, and assets that benefit the council. We cannot, legally, use the capital budget to prop up the revenue budget, though sometimes capital investments save money for the council or help it raise more income. We are looking for ways to do this.
It is ironic, though, that at the same time as this gap has been allowed to emerge in the revenue budget, there is capital that has not been spent. A combination of lack of resources and staff, outdated systems, complex legal arrangements with developers, and slow decision-making by the executive has delayed important investments.
Here in Bovey, residents have rightly noted that the growth of the town has not come with new infrastructure. Even though, in principle, the mechanisms do exist to make the infrastructure funding follow the population, these can break down on delivery at the local level, as seems to have happened in Teignbridge.
The danger to prevent now is a situation in which Teignbridge is unable to spend all its capital before Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) happens and important investments fall into the much larger in-tray of the new unitary authority that replaces Teignbridge.
The town council updated me on their response to the local plan consultation, making it clear that the infrastructure necessitated by – and promised along with – developments completed in the recent past needs to come before they agree to more housing. I agree that Teignbridge needs to solve its delivery issues. It also needs to get as quickly as possible to a focused capital programme that delivers necessary infrastructure and makes the investments in operations needed to keep the council solvent.
Despite being in opposition, Conservative councillors are doing what we can to accelerate all this.
In the meantime, for any resident of Bovey or Heathfield interested in the future of infrastructure in the town, Teignbridge is holding a drop-in session on Monday 22 September (5pm-8pm) at Riverside Community Centre, Bovey Tracey to discuss planning and shared priorities. I encourage as many people to come as possible.
