Council leaders have been urged to explain how communities will be affected by any proposed spending changes at an upcoming budget.
A council report due to be discussed by cabinet tomorrow (Wednesday, September 16) shows £90.9m of capital expenditure has been "reprofiled" into later financial years, reducing forecast spending in 2026/27 by £70.27m, the Liberal Democrat Party said.
Reprofiling does not mean projects have been cancelled, but The Liberal Democrats said residents deserved answers on whether the changes would result in delays to schools, roads, housing and regeneration schemes.
However, Durham County Council's Reform UK administration insists no projects have been cut and says reprofiling is a routine budgeting process that moves spending into the years when work is actually expected to take place. It says this year's capital budget has increased from £263 million to £293 million after securing additional funding.
Councillor Amanda Hopgood, leader of the County Durham Liberal Democrat group, said: “Reform UK need to give residents a clear explanation of what this £90.9m movement means for the projects they have been promised.
“Reprofiling may sound like a technical adjustment, but people want to know whether their new school, road improvements, housing schemes or regeneration projects will now arrive later than expected.
“Reform UK must explain which communities will wait longer and what it is doing to get delivery back on track.”
In response, Durham's deputy leader and cabinet member for finance Councillor Darren Grimes said: "Cllr Hopgood is describing her own accounting practice and pretending she's never seen it before.
"Reprofiling means moving money into the year it will actually be spent. Nothing has been cut.
"This year's capital budget has gone up, from £263 million to £293 million, because we've brought in £20 million of new funding sources.
"Every school, road scheme and regeneration project is still in the programme. What's changed is that the budget now tells the truth about when the spending goes out of the door.
"She knows this because she did exactly the same thing. Her own Quarter One report in 2022 reprofiled £13.6 million into future years. The year after it was £14.3 million.
"Every year the joint administration was in office, it reprofiled its capital budget at Quarter One, and nobody demanded a scheme-by-scheme inquest, because it is routine financial management."
He added: "Here's the part she'd rather nobody looked at. In her last full year in charge the council budgeted £362 million of capital spending and delivered £234 million.
"The year before that, it budgeted £321 million and delivered £233 million. In 2022/23 it was £268 million promised and £143 million built.
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"Communities waited longer under the Lib Dems every single year. The difference is that her budgets pretended otherwise.
"Reform are challenging officers to make capital budgets match real delivery, because budgets that don't cost taxpayers money through borrowing against schemes on timetables nobody believed. That's not a cut. They fudged, we’ve fixed.”
The Lib Dem warnings come as Durham County Council faces significant financial pressures.
Ahead of Wednesday’s cabinet meeting, the authority revealed it is forecasting an £83.662 million funding gap over the next four years and says major savings will be needed to balance the books from 2027/28 onwards.
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