The Council and democracy The draft budget proposals 2017-20

Council tax, changing benefits and business rates services

  1. Change our benefits, council tax and business rates services, saving £863,000. With new Government funding of £400,000 – to reflect new duties – we can save the equivalent amount. Reducing staff across the service could save £448,000. Charging partners for collecting money on their behalf would save £15,000.
  2. Reduce the amount the Council subsidises Council Tax Support. This used to be subsidised by the Government but is now funded by Council Tax payers – including those who are themselves finding it difficult to pay their Council Tax. We have reduced the amount to be saved from £2million to £1million. We ran a separate, detailed consultation on our proposals for council tax support that closed on Tuesday 15 December 2016.
  3. Increasing Council Tax. Our savings proposals are based on protecting adult social care by increasing Council Tax by 3% for the next two years. If we do not, we will have even less to spend on these services and we would need to find an additional £8.8million in savings. Our proposals are also based on a Council Tax increase of another 1.99% a year. This would raise about £8.5million to improve and maintain roads and help keep neighbourhoods clean. Without it, we would need to find more savings.

What people said when we asked about this between 3 November and 15 December 2016

People said:

Strongest agreement was for the options to change our benefits, council tax and business rates services with sixty-five percent agreeing. Disagreement was highest with the option to reduce Council Tax Support with fifty-two percent disagreeing. Twenty-one percent preferred to see council tax rising rather than services being cut. A further seven percent also agreed with this but only if they saw an improvement in services. Twenty-one percent said residents already paid enough and nine percent wanted the focus on more efficiency. Twelve percent did not want Council Tax Support cut for the most vulnerable. Fifty-six percent said these options would have a negative effect, particularly on their household budget, but twenty percent said it would have a positive impact through better services and support for vulnerable people. Disagreement was also strong with reducing emergency welfare grants. The main reasons included the need to focussing on the most vulnerable, and the longer-term savings made by getting people into work.

We said:

These are now budget proposals. We have reduced the staff savings needed in proposal 1. We have not gone ahead with an option to save £605,000 a year from emergency welfare grants.

Consultation on our proposed budget closed on 10 February 2017. We listened hard and considered all responses before finally setting our budget at our council meeting on 3 March.

Thanks to the thousands who joined the conversation.

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