Epsom and Ewell Borough Council has written to communities and local government secretary Greg Clarke reluctantly accepting a proposed multi-year financial settlement which details the money the council will receive from the government up to April 2020.

Currently the revenue support grant (RSG), the money councils receive from central government for the year ahead, is revealed a couple of months before the start of the financial year. But as part of the December 2015 spending review, the communities and local government made an offer to councils to take up a four-year funding settlement for the period 2016-17 to 2019-20. In order to accept this offer, councils had to respond this month.

The multi-year settlement is intended to provide funding certainty and stability for local authorities; enabling more proactive planning of service delivery and to support collaboration with partners.

However, for several councils this year’s provisional RSG announcement came as an unwelcome surprise.

The reduction in RSG is much deeper and faster, and 15 councils across England, including Epsom, will lose all their RSG over two years not four, and in 2018-19 Epsom will receive no RSG at all.

To make the financial situation worse the government has decided in 2019-20 Epsom Council is required to pay back £620,000 to them.

Councillor Eber Kington, chairman of the council’s strategy and resources committee, said: “It is unfair and unreasonable of the government to say that, in 2019-20 EEBC will have to pay them £620K.

“That is the equivalent of Epsom and Ewell residents paying an 11.5 per cent increase in the council tax to pay for services elsewhere in the country.

“However, we have to either accept the four-year deal as it is and with certainty about the exact level of our future funding, or take a chance with annual pronouncements of grant funding that could be worse should the economy falter or the government determines that it needs to take more from local authorities unprotected by that four-year deal.

“And with that threat of further reduced funding we felt we had little choice but to accept.

“But acceptance does not mean that we agree with the government’s offer and we will continue to argue for a revised final year settlement”.

In order to meet the financial challenges over the four-year term, this council will continue to reconfigure its services and charges, reduce operating costs and look at ways to generate greater income.