While Ceredigion County Council has a “strong track record of delivering planned savings and addressing its budget pressures”, the authority’s “shorter-term focus is potentially impeding the council’s ability to better plan for its longer-term financial sustainability,” Audit Wales has said.

In a review, carried out between May and July, Audit Wales warned that the “longer-term monitoring of the council's financial sustainability is impacted by its lack of a long-term comprehensive financial strategy.”

Audit Wales, in its report, said: “Overall, we found that the council has arrangements in place to support its present financial sustainability but lacks a long-term strategy to support this.

“The council has taken decisions to support its financial sustainability over the short to medium-term but does not have a comprehensive long-term financial strategy.”

The report said that the council has “considered options to improve its financial sustainability in the short/medium-term and has taken past decisions which have improved its resilience.”

“The council also has a strong track record of delivering planned savings and addressing its budget pressures, successfully achieving cumulative savings of about £60m over the last 10 years,” the report added.

“The council has a corporate approach to some savings through its ‘Doing things differently’ programme which is progressing several new themes and initiatives.

“However, the council lacks a comprehensive strategy to outline the longer- term (five years plus) financial benefits stemming from these.”

Audit Wales said it “recognises he unprecedented financial challenges that councils have faced for many years and are likely to continue to face for at least the medium term” with “significant real-terms reductions in spending power”, and recommended that Ceredigion County Council “should ensure that it has a comprehensive medium to long-term financial strategy that sets out clearly how it will address its anticipated funding pressures over the life of the strategy.”