East Cambridgeshire District Council

After three years of savings, redundancies and cuts to grants, East Cambridgeshire District Council is proposing no new reductions for the next financial year.

The authority is in the middle of a four year financial strategy which was approved last year to save over £2 million pounds by 2015.

This followed cuts of nearly 29 per cent to the Council’s main Government Grant for 2011/12 and 2012/13 without Ministers indicating what will happen over the longer term.

As a part of this process, the Council committed to reducing administration costs, increased some fees and charges such as licences and planning applications and froze or deferring recruitment to vacant posts.

Despite this backdrop, the Council is proposing to reinstate a grant of £7,500 to Care and Repair, who help disabled and vulnerable people in the district access grants so they can continue living in their own homes. The grant had been earmarked for the axe in last year’s budget.

In order to ensure the budget is balanced, the Council is proposing a Council Tax increase of 2.95 per cent which equates to a increase of 7.6p per week for the average band D property or  £3.99 over the whole year.

This money will be used to build up financial resilience to support services such as Housing which is forecast to face real challenges in the next two years and pay for changes to the waste service following a review of the service.

Councillor Peter Moakes, Leader of East Cambridgeshire District Council, said: “The last three years have been incredibly difficult with the financial situation forcing the authority to make significant cuts to services, grants and staff. This involved making a number of tough choices which were very hard at the time and have left a very lean District Council with a small budget to provide the services our communities need. However we are beginning to see the benefits of this action with the Council’s finances on track to meet the £2million savings target by 2015.

“This means we will not have to look to reduce any service or grant which we give to outside organisations further than already planned. However in order to balance the budget for this year, we are proposing to increase the Council Tax by 2.95 per cent – which works out at just over 7p extra a week. We also know that areas such as homelessness, housing benefits and waste will face growing pressures that we have to plan and pay for. However as I think we all realise these is no spare money lying around which is why we must plan for our future.

“While in an ideal world we would have preferred to freeze our council tax and take the offer from the Government, we are concerned in doing so would mean having to make significant rises in future years to cover the holes in our budget. This is a case about being financially prudent and careful with the finances which we have fought very hard to bring under control.”