Overview

Every February, the council sets a budget for the next year which sets out how much money we will be able to spend on each of the services the council provides.

Since 2010, the amount of money the council receives from government has reduced. At the same time, our costs have risen, because of inflation and because more people need to use our services.

Since 2010 the council has identified over £276m of savings. These include £41.9m of future savings agreed in February 2018 which will be made over the course of four years from 2019/20 to 2022/23. As part of our budget planning in February 2018, we forecast that we would also need to increase Council Tax each year.

We are consulting on a number of options for next year's budget (2019/20) ranging from no rise in Council Tax through to a 4% increase. Every 1% increase in Council Tax would raise approximately £2m to support the delivery of services and would add approximately £0.31/week to the Council Tax bill for band D properties.

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