Households in Bury face a council tax rise of just over five per cent from April after the authority set its budget. At Wednesday evening’s meeting, the council voted to increase council tax by 2.99 per cent for general council services, plus a two per cent levy to be spent exclusively on social care.
Levies added by the Greater Manchester Mayor, police and fire services add a further 0.2 per cent to the total bill. Council house rents will increase by the Government’s cap of seven per cent.
Money raised from this can only be spent on social housing. To balance the books the council has committed to making £24M of cuts to services including losing 36 jobs from the authority.
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The Labour controlled council added some extra funding to its previously published plans and said it is allocating an extra £400,000 to help the borough’s most vulnerable through the cost of living crisis. New council tax support of £100,000 will provide grants of £100 to 1,000 households who are financially struggling but not eligible for the current council tax support scheme.
Criteria for eligibility is being drawn up to ensure the support reaches those most in need. Community grants totalling £100,000 will provide £20,000 per neighbourhood, to be decided by councillors and local neighbourhood teams and Bury Market rents will be frozen for another year.
Each councillor will be allocated £1,000 to spend on local projects identified by residents. The council also agreed to spend £20,000 on events to build on Bury’s year as GM Town of Culture and £14,000 to celebrate the upcoming coronation of King Charles III and commemorate the life of Queen Elizabeth II, involving schools across the borough in creative projects.
£125,000 will be used to deal with the backlog in tree maintenance, exacerbated by storms and diseases such as Ash Die Back.
Coun Richard Gold, cabinet member for finance and communities, told the meeting that the council needed to find £31 million to balance the budget.
“We are facing tremendous financial challenges, primarily caused by the high rate of inflation,” he said. “Our energy costs have soared, along with the cost of supplies, while a national shortage of labour means we are having to use expensive outside agencies to provide essential services.
“Unfortunately, we are not getting the additional funding we need to meet these demands. This comes on top of a decade of austerity which has stripped more than £100 million from our budgets.” Coun Gold added: “Despite these challenges, we will continue to target support towards the most needy and vulnerable in our society.”
He added that although cuts were being made Bury Art Museum will not be closed, instead, members agreed to pursue a strategy of increasing the venue’s income through hosting commercial events.
Conservative opposition leader Russell Bernstein called Labour’s last minute changes to to the budget ‘political showboating’. He said the Labour administration has not delivered £2M of previously promised savings and a £1m saving had been duplicated.
He told the council that Bury residents were paying for ‘financial ineptitude’ and said the Labour leadership had ‘failed year on year’ to manage the borough’s finances properly. The Conservatives offered an amendment to the budget which promised the continuation of free caddy liners to households, a review of bin collections with an aim to bring back fortnightly collections for grey bins, a Township Fund of £100,000 each for the six towns in Bury and £600,000 for knife crime and anti-social behaviour initiatives.
That amendment was voted down by the council. The amended Labour budget was approved with 36 councillors, including Radcliffe First members supporting it, while 12 voted against.
One councillor, independent Yvonne Wright abstained from voting.
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