The budget responds to increasing demand for adult social care and rising costs in children’s services, and will provide new school places, care homes and additional road maintenance.
The Council recently launched a public consultation on a range of budget proposals designed to reduce costs by £32million which will help to pay for a huge increase in demand for older people’s residential care and rising costs of children’s services.
The budget gap is mostly addressed through proposals which improve efficiency or generate income. However, this was not enough, so the budget also includes increasing Council Tax by 5 per cent and a few changes to services.
Councillors voted against plans to close Dunstable Library two days a week, and to close Household Waste Recycling Centres two days a week.
Councillor Zerny, Leader of the Council said:
Over 2,000 people took part in the public consultation and your feedback was extremely helpful in setting a budget. We've had to make tough decisions, but this is a prudent budget which ensures we can continue to provide vital services for our residents.
Around 60 per cent of residents’ Council Tax is used to fund adult social care and children’s services, and the demand and cost in these areas is increasing. This is a national issue and while it is affecting us, it is the same everywhere.
Our focus has been on becoming more efficient and looking for ways to reduce costs without having a detrimental impact on services for residents, and that is reflected in the budget.
As part of this, the Council is reshaping the organisation to reduce costs by £10million. This means reducing non-essential spend and losing some staff, many of whom have been with the council for a long time. There is no pleasure in passing a budget which has such an effect on people's lives, but it is vital we run key services such as adult social care and children's services.
The vast majority of council services will continue unchanged, and we will also invest in new school places, transitioning schools to the two-tier system, providing more specialist school places for children with special educational needs, new care home facilities, leisure centres and maintaining our roads, including more money for cleaning roadside road drains to help alleviate flooding – something we know is important to residents.
The following service changes were removed from the draft budget saving proposals at the Council meeting:
- closing Dunstable library two days a week
- closing Household Waste Recycling Centres two days a week
- ceasing Ward Councillor Grants
- reviewing mental health employment support
- reducing funding for social care information and advice
Council also agreed to:
- add an additional £170,000 each year to the budget to allow a full annual cycle of gully cleaning
- an additional £30,000 for flooding information and outreach to residents
Council also decided to:
- revoke the decision to charge for replacement bins