WEST Devon Borough Council has agreed its budget for the next financial year despite calling the government’s new funding formula which favours urban areas “anything but fair”.

Labour’s “Fair” Funding Review has seen a reduction of just under £300,000 (7.5%) to pay for council services in the borough over the next three years.

It comes at a time when the council is facing more costs in temporary accommodation and inflationary increases

Council leader Mandy Ewings (Ind, Tavistock South West) urged the full council last week to “put our heads down and plough on”.

She said she was “deeply frustrated and disheartened” by the funding formula which overlooked the cost of delivering essential services in rural areas and left rural councils “pushed to the brink”

The borough’s part of the council tax will increase to the maximum of 2.99 per cent (£8.05 per year on a Band D property) from April to produce a balanced budget.

Most urban councils would receive 41% more per head of population in government funding spending power than the most rural councils in 2026/27, said the leader.

But she told councillors: “We don’t have a choice , it’s not very nice but we just have to get on with it. We can’t always moan about our little lot in life, we have to do what this council is very adept at doing, diversifying and being innovative.”

The council is forecasting a budget shortfall of £500,000 in 2027/28 but will continue lobbying the government for more funding.

Included in this year’s budget is £200,000 to support business and regenerative farming to replace the loss of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund grant to the council, there will be money for refurbishing public loos and a maintenance programme for car parks.

The council is also continuing to support communities and landowners to come forward with potential housing sites for affordable homes under its West Devon Housing Offer and £120,000 of income from the second homes tax will be used on local housing projects.

Cllr Ewings said the council had brought back arts grants and inflated its support for community and village halls from £30,000 to £200,000.

Cllr Ric Cheadle (Ind, Buckland Monachorum) made a plea for the council to use more of its unearmarked reserves, which were likely to be £1.9 million by March 31, 2027.

He said with local government reorganisation around the corner, which would see the abolition of district councils, he wanted to make sure the money was preserved for local people and not handed over to a bigger unitary council.

He was told that £500,000 of that money would be used on key priorities in the council’s plan but the authority needed to keep an “absolute minimum” level of reserves at £1.25 million.

Cllr Ewings said: “In an ideal world local government reorganisation would go away but we would not look very pretty if it did and we had spent all the money.”

Cllr Chris West (Lib Dem, Burrator) said the council was right to feel aggrieved about the funding formula and the lack of consideration by the government that rural areas “have young people too”, a large proportion of elderly people which was “increasing exponentially” and tourism pressures but he said that it was right that urban areas should be funded better.