Information on the Council's Annual Revenue and Capital Budgets

Our spending plans for 2008-09 to 2010-11

Marks

Councillor

Ian Marks

Leader of the Council

Councillor

Keith Bland

Deputy Leader of the Council

Since May 2006 we have made a good start on our journey tomake Warrington an outstanding town in the north west, with opportunities for all. This is not just our view - it is also shared by the Audit Commission who on 7 February 2008 assessed us as a ‘four star’ excellent council that is improving well. The Commission also continues to recognise that the council makes good use of its resources, delivers good value for money and has a stable financial position.

Over the last few months we have consulted widely to find out your views on how we are performing and what matters most to you.

In November 2007, we held a number of local public consultation events where you told us how we were doing and shared your views on what our priorities should be for the coming year. Your views helped shape and influence the detailed spending proposals we produced for consultation in early January 2008.

During January we consulted many community groups and received strong support for our proposals to increase recycling, improve the look of the borough and provide more neighbourhood based services that you could influence and change. You also asked us to look again at some of our savings proposals. We have listened to your views and we have changed some of our spending and savings proposals in response to your views.

We will keep consulting with you about how we are doing and wish to thank all of you who took part and gave us your views.

In 2008/09 we need to spend an extra £13m to maintain current services. This is a result of increases in pay and prices, continued increases in demand for adult social care and national obligations to complete a review of our pay strategy to ensure equal pay for work of equal value.

Our budget also includes five priority investments to respond to the issues you identified as most important:

introducing a new kerbside collection service for dry recyclable materials – responding to your views that we need to do more to increase recycling and reduce landfill.
establishing a look of the borough fund to improve highway drainage, the overall condition of our roads and the standard and frequency of street cleaning – in response to your views that we need cleaner streets and better roads.
setting up a new neighbourhood improvement fund to establish neighbourhood areas and address local issues identified by local residents - responding to your views that we need to work more closely with neighbourhoods and communities and provide more localised services.
providing short-term investment to build capacity to deliver improved services in the future.
strengthening licensing enforcement– responding to your concerns about alcohol related anti-social behaviour.

Escalating costs and these priority investments mean, once again, we must take tough decisions to ensure that money is spent on our priorities and that we can balance our spending plans. We have looked again at our savings proposals and in response to concerns raised by youth parliament representatives we have:

removed our proposal to end the half-fare bus pass scheme for students aged 16 to 18 who live within three miles of the college they attend; and
reduced the proposed increase in bus passes charges from September 2008 for students aged 16 to 18 living over 3 miles from their college next year.

In total our budget recommendations will reduce council spending by nearly £7.2m next year so that we can protect the services that matter the most to you. We will achieve this by demanding increased efficiency from all services, increasing income and reducing spending on a limited number of services.

Even with these challenging savings, we need to increase council tax by 4.7% next year to fund our current costs and deliver the improvements you have told us we need to make. This increase is lower than last year’s 5% increase and the 4.85% increase we consulted upon but is still higher than we would like and is a result of the disappointing 2% funding increase we have received from central government. This 2% increase, or £1m extra funding, contrasts with the £13m standstill pressures we face to continue delivering services next year.

For a band D property this 4.7% increase would mean a 92 pence per week increase (an annual increase of £47.88) and would still keep council tax below average levels.

As the collection authority for fire, police and parish precepts the council does not set the level of increase in council tax for the services these authorities provide. The table below identifies the proposed overall increase in council tax for 2008/09.

council tax tables 2008-09