Green light for 4.99% rise in council tax
CHESHIRE East has approved its budget for the next financial year which includes mothballing tips in Bollington and Poynton and increasing council tax by 4.99 per cent.
The council voted by 43 to 32 in favour of the budget which brings in a raft of savings measures including three emergency closures at household recycling centres from April.
It was said the council planned to trial mobile household waste recycling in those areas including Nantwich - but details of how it would operate ‘remain in development’.
The tips could re-open at a future date - a final decision is expected in September once the formal review of centres has been completed.
Council leader Sam Corcoran said: “No council leader wants to put up council tax particularly during a cost of living crisis when people are struggling with increasing prices and high interest rates, but those factors affect councils too.”
He said it was a ‘significant achievement’ to have a legally balanced budget but it was essential the council stuck to it.
Deputy leader Craig Browne said all councils were under huge financial pressure and ‘the frustrating thing is it doesn’t need to be like this’.
He said: “We raise more than £150m a year in business rates collected from hard-working, well performing local businesses.
“However, as a council, we only get to keep £50m of this, with the other £100m going into the government’s coffers.
“£100m would easily cover the projected growth in demand for and increased costs of delivering council services over the course of the next 12 months.”
The Conservatives voted against the budget. Their group leader Janet Clowes said inflation and high interest rates are linked to external, international and global events, that all governments are struggling to address.
But she said the responsibility for how the public purse is spent in Cheshire East ‘rests in this chamber’, adding measures outlined in the budget are ‘meaningless’ if not delivered.
“Don’t under-estimate the impact on this year’s budget of the delays and non-delivery of elements of last year’s MTFS [medium term financial strategy],” said Coun Clowes.
Liberal Democrat leader Reg Kain, who voted against the budget, said: “I feel that the projected income from a number of areas is overly optimistic and does not reflect the true economic insights and projections of the national economic situation.”
Councillor Laura Smith, a Labour member who abstained from voting, said: “People are paying more and they’re getting less because of this Tory government’s ongoing attack of austerity.”
But Conservative councillor Tony Dean said Cheshire East’s ‘first knee-jerk reaction should not have been to cut services but to look at our own expenditure.’
Coun Dean said: “We’re cutting household waste recycling centres, we’re doing a strategic leisure review to save £1.3m, street cleaning we want to save millions there, green spaces maintenance - and all those things should have been the last things we did not the first things to save money.”