Bristol city councillors will vote on Labour mayor Marvin Rees’s annual budget on Tuesday afternoon (February 21). A meeting of full council at City Hall will decide the fate of proposed cuts and savings totalling £16.2million in the 12 months from April to balance the authority’s books, including a big increase in garden waste subscription fees, new pay-and-display parking and a 4.99 per cent council tax rise.
Each year the opposition groups suggest their own changes to the budget, called amendments, which will also be voted on in turn. Like the overall revenue spending plans for day-to-day services, which run up to £483.5million for 2023/24, any investments in schemes or the scrapping of new or increased charges have to pay themselves by taking funding from elsewhere in the council’s coffers.
The Greens, Conservatives, Lib Dems and Knowle Community Party have each set out what they would do with your money. Here are the suggestions from the Conservatives.
Read more: Proposed Bristol waste charge hikes a 'charter for fly-tippers', councillors warn
The Tories want to scrap controversial proposed new charges at 10 free car parks in the suburbs and a raft of price hikes for rubbish and recycling services, including a rise from £32 to £50 for garden waste subscriptions. Other proposed cost increases in the council's budget that the group opposes include higher fees to collect bulky domestic and DIY waste and Christmas trees, and replacement refuse and recycling bins, which Conservative group leader Cllr Mark Weston recently branded a “fly-tipping charter”.
He said the Labour administration’s ideas would create more mess that the authority would then have to pay to clear up as some residents avoided the charges. Cllr Weston’s amendment reversing the increases would be paid for by reforming the council tax reduction scheme (CTRS) to require all working-age recipients to make a minimum 15 per cent contribution to council tax bills, which would raise about £1.5million from 2024.
He says Labour was already planning to make most households pay at least 10 per cent from next year, although this is in the early stage of development and requires consultation. On capital spending, the Tories want to use £1million from developer contributions, called strategic CIL, to invest in parks and green spaces.
Cllr Weston said: “Our budget amendments strive to strike a fair balance between preserving valued services and expecting most people who benefit from these essential provisions to help pay for them. We appreciate that changes to the CTRS are difficult, but the 100 per cent rebate or relief is simply unaffordable, and it is a move which was strongly endorsed in the recent public consultation on the city’s finances.
“The need for this action is also borne out by the fact that the Labour administration are themselves looking to introduce a 10 per cent minimum threshold for working-age households. Conservative colleagues feel that removal of the planned extra parking and waste charges better represents people’s priorities and avoids the obvious pitfalls of such a flawed strategy.
“Having to pay to use district car parks will clearly harm our suburban shopping centres, and the idea of imposing extra costs around waste is a fly-tipping charter. These are clearly false economies. We are confident that our alternative spending suggestions are popular and constitute something-for-something in return for an unavoidable council tax hike.”
The budget papers said the group’s revenue amendment, which would reverse the new parking charges, including at Westbury Hill car park in Westbury-on-Trym which has sparked local anger, as well as cancelling waste fee increases among other proposals, would be funded by the CTRS changes and also £1.5million from reserves in 2023/24, to be topped back up over subsequent years. Conservatives want to deter parking on Durdham Down with a new traffic regulation order (TRO), increase the authority’s planning applications and enforcement teams, improve road inspections and maintenance of gullies, gutters and drains and dedicate one-off funding for parks, including new play areas.
A council officer’s equalities assessment on the council tax proposals said: “Maintaining the CTRS is likely to benefit protected characteristic groups where there is already evidence of disproportionate hardship, as the scheme supports households who are on a low income, and awards are most highly concentrated in those areas that are in the most deprived.” They said the implications of taking money temporarily from a pot of reserves would “reduce the council's ability to respond to unplanned 2023/24 pressures”.
On scrapping the parking charges, the officer said this would mean small district car parks were “out of line with parking across the city” but that the proposal would limit the disproportionate impact on poorer households and those most reliant on cars, such as disabled and older people. The officer’s assessment of removing the waste fee hikes said Bristol Waste’s impending business plan was “dependent on the introduction of the service charges”.
It said: “If these charges are removed or in some cases delayed by one year, the municipal waste contract would operate at a significant loss and would not be able to deliver against its obligations.” The officer said the Conservatives’ suggested cost of commissioning a new TRO to supplement existing parking restrictions on Durdham Down was likely to be unrealistically too low to implement a scheme.
They said there was a risk that taking £2million – over a fifth – from the central strategic pot of CIL to improve parks and create new play areas “may result in insufficient funding to deliver the physical infrastructure required” to support thousands of new homes being built in designated areas of growth and regeneration. But the report’s equalities impact assessment said access to green spaces was “extremely important for mental health and wellbeing” and that the funding would “support the required investment to deliver” the improvements.
Read next:
Document shows council's housing company expects delays to almost half of its projects
Bristol Waste loses third top boss in just six months – but councillors were not told
Bristol car park charges next to GP surgeries a 'tax on people for being ill'
POLITICS: To keep up to date with latest Bristol politics news, and discuss thoughts with other residents, join our Bristol politics news and discussion here. You can also sign up to our politics newsletter here .
Click here for the latest headlines from in and around Bristol.
