The District Council sets its budget at tomorrow night’s council meeting (Tuesday 31st). You can download the full agenda from here. (8.67 Mb – 96 pages)
The official council view is on the council website here.
Here’s a few points from a Lib Dem perspective:
The government is pressurising district councils not to increase council tax, and offering us 2.5 % extra in grant if we don’t increase the council tax. This is the same as last year. As a result of this, the District Council is likely to freeze its council tax charge this year.
But the government is likely to remove that extra grant next year, which means a gap in funding of about ?164,000 in 2013/14. So, to quote the old song “There may be trouble ahead”
There certainly is going to be trouble next year over council tax benefits. (see page 3.19 in the council paperwork) The government is telling councils that from 2013/14, the Council tax benefits benefits budget will be cut by 10%, with councils given control over how the cut is applied in their own area. We understand that councils won’t be allowed to impose a cut in council tax benefit on pensioners, which means a bigger cut for everyone else involved.
One boost for councils will be from the “New Homes Bonus” (apge 3.10). This is a bonus councils get for new homes in their area and bringing empty homes back into use. Rochford District got a bonus of ?116,807 in 2011/12 and expects to get about ?149,300 for this year. But expect some serious debate over how this money is spent – and where.
Looking at this year:
All the parties have been involved in discussions, and there has been a degree of consensus.
But that doesn’t mean that every councillor is happy with everything! For example, some councillors are against the scrapping of the summer swim scheme (page 3.33 in the council paperwork)
One example of Lib Dem input into the budget is that charges for sports pitches will be frozen this year (page 3.87)
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