DEVON County Council leader James McInnes says his party has kickstarted preparations for next year’s local elections sooner than he’s experienced before.

The Conservative councillor for Hatherleigh and Chagford says he believes they will perform strongly next May.

All of Devon’s 60 council seats will be contested, including Cllr McInnes’s, which he has held since 2005.

“I’m talking to my colleagues politically and I don’t ever remember a time when we’ve been getting our act together as soon as we are this time,” he told Radio Exe’s Devoncast podcast.

“You can have a go at me on May 2 if I’ve got this wrong, but while we have a Labour government, I’m seeing from the general public a lot of respect for what the county council has done and respect for what the administration has done over the past 14 years.”

He acknowledged that while local people may continue raising issues such as potholes, but believes Devon’s Conservatives have reacted to challenging circumstances after many years of cuts.

“People realise that over the past 14 years, we’ve taken hundreds of millions of pounds out of the budget due to austerity, but we’re still here and delivering services for the people of Devon,” said Cllr McInnes, who took over as leader in May from fellow Tory John Hart.

“We also have a new chief executive [Donna Manson] who was hired 18 months ago and who has brought a new vigour to the council in terms of us preparing ourselves and making sure we are sustainable for the future.

“It’s no secret to anyone that there is no government over the horizon with a big pot of money and saying ‘we’re here to save you’, so we have to make the changes that make us sustainable for the future, and that’s what we are doing.”

Auditor Grant Thornton said recently that the county council had a “strong record of financial management” but raised concerns about its ability to save tens of millions of pounds to balance its medium-term budget.

In a report for the authority’s audit committee, the firm said future cost pressures will mean just over £136 million – equivalent to about eight per cent of current expenditure – will need to be secured through a mix of savings, earnings and grant income if the council is to achieve its medium-term financial plan up to March 2028.

It said: “The high cumulative dedicated schools grant (DSG) deficit, reliance on reserves to balance the recent budget, and the required levels of savings needed into the medium term to deliver the medium-term financial strategy represent a significant risk to financial sustainability.”

Bradley Gerrard