Living within your means budget approved by Council

Bath & North East Somerset Council tonight confirmed its commitment to sound financial planning and approved investment for food recycling collections, tackling highways maintenance pressures, more accessible facilities for disabled people and support for affordable housing.

The budget also increased funding for children and young people and protected funding for vulnerable adults. Surplus reserves were not used to plug recurring budget pressures.

Councillor Malcolm Hanney (Conservative, Chew Valley North), Cabinet Member for Resources, said, “Prudent management of the Council’s finances has meant we have been able to re-prioritise resources to key areas and support and invest in the area for the future.

“To reduce costs to the local taxpayer in the long-term, the Council has invested an extra £3 million for roads maintenance that will avoid more costly repairs in the future. We are also investing £800,000 in separate food waste collections that will increase recycling and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill, thus avoiding costly landfill charges. Services for children, vulnerable older people, and disabled people are either being enhanced or protected.”

The level of Council Tax increase was the lowest ever achieved since Bath & North East Somerset Council was formed; 2.5%. This is despite the Council having to meet shortfalls in Central Government schemes, such as the shortfall for free bus passes for the over-60s totals £5 million since the scheme started. We are also being short-changed by Central Government by approximately £2.5 million in 2010/11 by its own grant damping calculations – an amount equivalent to over 3% on Council Tax. This grant damping totals over £12.5M cumulatively over the five years to 2010/2011.

Councillor Hanney added, “The Council must become even more efficient, prioritise services, charge fairly where appropriate, and make difficult decisions to balance the books and have an acceptable level of Council Tax increase for our residents.”

List of approved budget items 

· A total of £800k of revenue and capital funding to provide for the early introduction of separate Food Waste Collections from October 2010;

· Additional £3m of one-off funding (£500,000 of which has been brought forward to this year) for highways maintenance to address priority backlog maintenance requirements, including deterioration from recent weather conditions;

· £850,000 for Children’s Services and £150,000 for Adult Social Care to cover the resources required to continue to deliver high standards of service against the background of increasing pressures;

· £600,000 for disabled facilities grants;

· £3 million for affordable housing;

· £250,000 of funding to support the promotion of the area including activities building up to and relating to the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics where Bath will be a significant host training venue;

· £50,000 recurring funding for street cleansing to enable continuation of the additional provision made in the current financial year;

· £150,000 to ensure sufficient resources are available to support the implementation of the Regeneration Delivery Plans for Bath, Keynsham, and the Somer Valley;

· £50,000 to Future Bath Plus to support events and marketing initiatives across the B&NES area generating increasing footfall and business activity. This commitment is expected to leverage matching funds from the business community;

· £10,000 to support and match fund the business community initiative to progress and formally consult on a Business Improvement District for Bath;

· £50,000 for additional street and gulley cleaning, bringing the total extra street cleaning budget for this year to £100,000.

· £50,000 to support the developing economic, cultural and educational links with Jiangxi Province and Jingdezhen.

· £75,000 funding for the Youth Service to support an increased emphasis on empowering and supporting the development of local community activities, including a pilot grant scheme to support community organisations providing targeted youth activities. Of this amount £25,000 will also be used to provide free swimming for disadvantaged children.