Ninth year of austerity for Nuneaton Council

Further budget cuts planned in Nuneaton as council attempts to save more money.

Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council have agreed a council tax increase of 2.99 percent and additional savings of £400,000 to balance the books. 

This is in addition to the £700k of savings approved as part of the draft budget in November.  

The Borough Council element of the Council Tax increase equates to an extra £6.59 per year for a Band D property. Warwickshire County Council and the Police and Crime Commissioner have also set increases – 4.99% and 6.25% respectively. The total increase in a Band D property for next year is 4.87% or £83.39 per year. 

The Council has pledged to continue to protect the most vital frontline services, but significant cut backs have been unavoidable. The overall revenue budget for the new financial year - which starts on 1 April - is £14.5m. This represents the Council’s general fund, the money it will have coming in or needs to find for spending on key services, including income from council tax, business rates and the Government’s annual revenue grant. It does not include rent from council housing tenants. 

This year, the Council’s core Government grant has been cut by almost half a million pounds to £269,000, adding to the £6.7m already slashed since 2010 – over 60% of our core funding. Although the budget deficit is eased by the council tax increase and a projected £0.3m cash injection from the Council’s trading arm, NABCEL, the Council has been forced to make significant cuts and, unfortunately, this has included some redundancies.

“This is a sad day for all of us. Local government budgets have been severely slashed across the country and every local authority is in a similar boat to ours.

“We are a very well-managed local authority with an extremely good financial record and this has meant that we’ve been able to avoid taking the extreme measures some councils, such as Northamptonshire, have been forced to take. However, in order to make ends meet in these austere times we’ve had to take some very difficult decisions and make some painful cuts to service.

“It saddens us to make these cuts and it especially hurts to make redundancies. We continue to make every effort possible to protect the front line delivery of services, and whilst we have continued to deliver a broad range of services despite declining income since 2010, the position is becoming increasingly difficult to manage.” said Cllr Dennis Harvey, Leader of the Council

The savings agreed this evening amount to over £400k, bringing the total to over £1.1m, when added to those reductions previously approved at the Council’s November meeting. The latest budget reductions include:

• Staffing restructures, which do include a small number of redundancies 
• An increase in various fees and charges – including cemeteries and sports pitches 
• Reduction to one public convenience facility in each town
• Changes to the democratic process – including reducing by one Cabinet member and from four Overview and Scrutiny Panels to two 

Here are the key numbers:

Total revenue budget for 2018/19: £14.5m

Total savings or increased income the council required to balance books: £1.3m – this is the savings of £1.1m above plus the council tax increase  

Housing Revenue Account

The budget for the HRA (Housing Revenue Account) included a 1% rent reduction for our tenants, in line with government policy. An increase in garage rents of 3.9%, in line with RPI, was also approved. 

The HRA capital programme – the amount we spend improving our housing stock – will be £13m for next year. This will be spent on continuing to ensure that our stock meets decent homes standards and budget provision has also been made for further new build developments, to help us meeting the rising demand for housing.