TOWN leaders have been praised after a council slashed its deficit by more than £30,000.

A successful year of budgeting has seen Halstead Town Council’s excess expenditure decrease by more than half, while the council has continued to provide the events they see as vital to the town such as the torchlight procession and Music in the Park.

At the end of the last financial year, the town council faced a daunting deficit of £47,330.

But with ‘prudent expenditure’ and a focus on not overspending, this has been reduced to £15,761.

Chair of finance, Mick Radley, said: “It has been a lot of good work, and good decisions form the council to allow us to make these improvements.

“We set out to to reduce the deficit, but the key was to not affect the services we provide to residents, and I think we have been successful out that.

“It has been a lot of prudent expenditure, which has helped, as well as cost savings elsewhere.

“It is part of our responsibility to manage council tax payers money affectively.”

Although the deficit has been drastically reduced, earmarked reserves are much lower.

Earmarked reserves are usually used for emergency pay outs, and although it hasn’t decreased this year, boosting the reserves has been labelled a priority for this financial year.

The town council has set themselves the target of increasing their surplus to £8,300, with some of this to be dedicated to reserves.

Mr Radley is continuing as finance chair for the coming financial year.

He added: “We are two months into the new financial year, and we are on track.

“Our target this year is to increase the surplus by £8,300, and put some of that back into the earmarked reserves.

“The earmarked reserves are low, which can be worrying, because we need that money in case of emergencies, but that number hasn’t gone down, which is positive and we can build on that this year. We have stayed stable, and now we can push on.”

At Monday night’s full town council meeting, town mayor Shirley Diver praised the hard work of the finance committee.

She said: “Councillor Radley, and the whole finance committee have done amazingly.

“They were faced with a daunting task, and it has required a lot of hard work and meetings. But they have been excellent.”