Council tax to rise by 2.85%
Council also signs off £1.5m for flood victims:
COUNCILLORS in Rhondda Cynon Taff have approved next year’s budget, which includes £1.5m for flood victims and a council tax rise under 3%.
Last Wednesday full council gave its support to the revenue budget proposals for 2020-21, which include the £1.5m released from general reserves to help people and businesses get back on their feet after the devastating floods caused by Storm Dennis.
Director of finance Barrie Davies told the council he believes the use of these reserves to help residents and businesses is “wholly appropriate” and that they would be replenished to the recommended £10m level.
Under the plans, the Individual Schools Budget (ISB) will increase next year by a total of £12.7m, a rise of 8.5%. RCT received a 4.5% increase in funding in the Welsh Government provisional settlement for next year, which includes teachers’ pay and pension costs.
It brings in an extra £17m to the council and reduced the council budget gap from over £16m to over £8m.
It was reduced again to £1.3m through more than £1m of savings from the council’s materials recycling facility, day centres, office accommodation and home care charges.
The council says it has met its £6m efficiencies target and that £182,000 has been redistributed to the council from the Llwydcoed Crematorium Committee. But the proposed 2.85% increase in council tax will raise the budget gap by £132,000 because of the costs around the council tax reduction scheme.
The council has set out how it plans to plug the remaining budget gap of more than £1m for 202021.
Some fees and charges are going up, including meals on wheels and day centre meals, which will rise by 10p per meal. School meals will go up by 5p per meal but will be frozen for the following two years.
The price of Pontypridd Lido adult swimming will go up by 50p.
But the council’s leisure membership Leisure for Life will be frozen, as will car-parking charges and summer and winter playing fees for sports clubs.
The cost of these proposals will be £6,000.
The council’s cabinet has agreed to develop supported accommodation at Penllew Court in Trecynon and Crown Avenue in Treorchy, which are now nearing completion and people will be able to move in during 2020-21. The part-year savings for the council from this are £400,000.
The council has decided to cut the budget of the Council Tax Reduction Scheme (CTRS) by £350,000, reducing it to £24.6m, which is still above Welsh Government funding of £21.5m. In November last year, the projected underspend on the CTRS was £352,000.
The council has saved £810,0000 from the successful retendering of its home-to-school transport service over recent years, which has reduced costs.
Finally, the council plans to use £804,000 of its reserves to cover the rest of the budget gap.
The council has also highlighted some spending priorities for the next financial year.
One of these is youth engagement and offending, with a core £1.9m spend and an extra £250,000 set aside increasing the budget by 13%.
Another area the council is targeting is paddling pools, after a number of voluntary groups were able to open pools during last summer.
The council will spend £50,000 to help more paddling pools open throughout the summer holiday period.
The council will also use £500,000 of revenue spending to allow, through borrowing powers, £7.5m of capital funding on strategic highways developments, parks and green spaces and extra care facilities.
And £105,000 part-year funding will go towards reopening the Muni Arts Centre in Pontypridd this summer, ahead of Awen Cultural Trust delivering its longer term plans for the building.
After this, there would be a £140,000 annual spend by the council.
It was also announced that there would be funding to address poverty in RCT, particularly in areas such as Penrhiwceiber and Tylorstown which have high levels of poverty.
Council leader Andrew Morgan, Labour, said: “This is by far the most positive budget settlement we have had for a number of years – the most positive for a decade.
“But it doesn’t undo 10 years of austerity.”
He said it is a “robust” budget because of the £6m of efficiency savings they found, but warned: “How we deliver efficiencies is going to become much much more challenging.” He said the council tax rise is likely to be one of the lowest in Wales and that RCT residents pay the fourth of five lowest amounts of council tax on average when it comes to the bandings.
On schools, he said: “It is by far the largest increase schools have had.
“Let’s hope this is the way to go in future in terms of significant increases from Welsh Government.”
Councillor Pauline Jarman, the leader of the main Plaid Cymru opposition group, said she was pleased to hear about the investment in Penrhiwceiber and Tylorstown: “If two communities have suffered for decades and decades, it is those two wards.”
She said the budget will probably be revisited because of the floods, adding that it “could take years to recover”.
She added: “Plaid Cymru supports the uplift in the education budget.
“It still means schools will be under extreme pressure to balance budgets.
“So many already have deficits.”
Councillor Mike Powell, Independent, asked how much of the extra £12.5m for the schools budget would be for pay and pension costs, and said that the 8.5% increase was just for the general schools pot and not for schools across the board.
Councillor Joel James, Conservative, raised concerns about the level of debt that the council is accumulating, which he said was around £357m.