Telford & Wrekin Council sets budget for the new financial year
Telford & Wrekin Council has set its budget for the new financial year, targeting promoting jobs and growth.
The budget will close a savings gap of £9m next year while clearly promoting attracting new jobs, investment and growth in the borough while protecting as far as possible council services.
The council says it will do this through:
- The flagship £250 million Southwater development, kick started by the Council, to attract significant private sector investment, and featuring new bars, restaurants, a hotel and 11 screen cinema bringing around 260 new jobs and a new regional leisure attraction. The cinema and the first bars and restaurants are due to open in early 2014.
- Investing in making the borough a more business friendly place
- Continuing to regenerate parts of the borough such as Brookside, Hadley and Oakengates
- Nearly £200m invested in the council’s Building Schools for the Future programme, which will see seven new secondary schools rebuilt alongside new or refurbished community leisure facilities
- A major multi million pound stability scheme in the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site, protecting the borough’s biggest tourist attraction.
- Investing in schemes to help establish new income earning opportunities for the Council by adopting a more commercial approach and identifying money saving initiatives, while doing more to promote the borough as a destination for businesses and visitors.
- Investing more into winter roads maintenance and children’s safeguarding
- Focussing public health activity in areas where this will have the greatest impact and getting more people active
The Council will, increase council tax from April to support these plans by the equivalent of 32 pence a week for the average borough Band B home, a below inflation increase of 1.9 per cent.
This continues to reflect views of borough residents when the majority of those who responded to a consultation last year supported a strategy to increase council tax to help protect services and promote growth and also supported this year’s strategy.
The Council says that its funding situation is made worse because it misses out on millions of pounds of Government funding which should come to the borough.
Savings in the coming year will be made across a range of services.
Councillor Bill McClements, cabinet member for Resources and Service Delivery, said: “While many councils are implementing very significant cuts to essential frontline services and stopping major building projects, this budget will help ensure that we can continue to invest in attracting the new businesses, jobs and growth that this borough so badly needs.
“It sets our stall out quite clearly - we are a council that supports and wins business and this is the key focus of the budget passed tonight.
“Over the last few years this council has done more than most to make savings - cutting around 985 posts, more than halving the number of senior managers, reducing the number of offices it has by a third, cutting back offices costs by over a third and buying at better value. We will continue to work to make further savings.
“This approach will see us save £51 million since 2009 but we can’t simply keep on cutting.
“We must look forward and put in place the measures this borough needs to create new jobs and growth - that is what this budget will deliver.”
