WILTSHIRE Council says it is confident it will not need to use any of its £13million of reserves to balance its budgets.

Nearly £13 million has been earmarked for reserves by the authority - the equivalent of four per cent of the total budget.

During a scrutiny meeting into the budget for the next financial year, which is being proposed at £332million, Philip Whitehead, cabinet member for finance, defended the reserves figure and said that while other councils have used reserves to pay for council overspend, Wiltshire Council is set to balance its books.

Coun Stewart Dobson said: “Our reserves equate to four per cent and although I’m not in favour of huge reserves, as I know some local authorities have very large reserves,  is there a chance we could increase to a little higher figure?

"I know external auditors say it is adequate, but at the end of the day our reserves are our backstop. Is there a chance we might be able to increase that?”

Coun Whitehead said:  “I am entirely happy with the adequacy of our reserves and so are the auditors. There’s a large side of me that says I don’t want money sat there doing nothing, if you put £10m in reserves, that is £10m not spent on transformation.

"I question some authorities who have huge reserves and are struggling to meet their annual revenue budgets, why aren’t they spending their money on providing better services?

“Others have used them year on year to combat not balancing their budget. We balance our budget year on year so our reserves have remained absolutely stable. Having said that, if we had the opportunity to increase it by £1-2 million I would increase them by that."

Nationally local authorities have £3.382 billion in general reserves.