Monmouthshire County Council’s Cabinet yesterday (18th December 2013) agreed the authority’s proposed budget for next year (2014-15). But the fall in Welsh Government funding of £9 million means that they claim they will be will be looking at different ways of delivering some of their services.
We were told:
“It will now be taken to the communities we serve in a series of engagement events throughout January 2014. The proposed budget would see education spending protected and social services spending increased.”
The community engagement events will take place as follows:
- Thursday 9th January, 6.30-8.30pm – Caldicot School
- Saturday 11th January, 10-3pm – Caldicot Town Centre
- Tuesday 14th January, 6.30-8.30pm – Chepstow School
- Wednesday 15th January, 6.30-8.30pm – Abergavenny (leisure centre hall)
- Saturday 18th January, 10-3pm (drop in session) – Abergavenny Town Hall
- Monday 20th January, 6.30-8.30pm – Monmouth Comprehensive School
- Tuesday 21st January, 6.30-8.30pm, Usk Centenary Hall
The consultation period will end on 31st January 2014 and consultation responses will be considered by Cabinet before the final budget proposals are presented to them on 12th February 2014, with a recommendation to full Council to set Council Tax on 27th February 2014.
Cllr Phil Murphy, the Cabinet member with responsibility for finance, said:
“Our principle throughout this budget process has been to ask how we can maintain existing services, rather than asking which ones we should cut.
“We asked for our communities to help us with that. We were the first council in Wales to directly engage on next year’s budget with the communities we serve at our five major towns throughout last October. Now that Cabinet has agreed a draft budget, we’re going to go back to talk to those communities again. You will see that there is still a gap and community engagement will help us to close that.
“The proposed savings include better targeting of road gritting, considering consolidating our tourist information and cultural attractions, switching off streetlights in certain areas between midnight and 5am, further reducing our office accommodation, reviewing overtime arrangements and creating a cost neutral waste collection service. We are also looking to make efficiencies in social care services and education, although front line funding will be protected.”
The budget also assumes an increase in council tax of 3%. The agreed budget paper can be found at: http://www.monmouthshire.gov.uk/cabinet-18th-december-2013/
Council Leader, Cllr Peter Fox added:
“We have already huge savings through ground breaking changes to the way that we work. We now operate in such a way that we simply can’t be compared with anywhere else. We are the only local authority in the UK to operate a 2 staff to 1 desk working environment – which means smaller buildings and lower running costs. Our staff are equipped to work from anywhere and even the Chief Executive doesn’t have his own desk.
“We use green technology to save on power bills and have already made millions of pounds worth of savings in back office costs. We are working at producing a better income from our tourist attractions and leisure centres and have embraced collaborative working with a range of initiatives around Gwent and beyond. But the unexpectedly high level of savings that we must make for next year is forcing us to look further. We are determined to adopt innovative approaches to maintaining as many services as we can, but I know that some of what we propose to do – especially around street lighting and litter picking – will be more visible to people in their day to day lives than the significant back office savings that we’ve already made.”
