The savings will allow the administration to reduce the use of its special reserves to balance the 2025/26 budget. At a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, September 23, the county council’s leader, Nick Adams-King, welcomed the “good news”. He added: “Certainly, the steps that we’ve been making to control expenditure are beginning to work along with the SP25 [Savings Proposals] that we made last year. So, we are moving in the right direction. Mr Lowe said: “What this underspend would mean is that we’d now only have to draw down £44 million from the Budget Bridging Reserve.