Draft paper contains hard choices in bid to find £20 million savings.
Milton Keynes City Council has published its draft budget for next year which contains a number of difficult decisions over council tax, cuts and savings in order to find the £20 million it needs to ‘balance the books’.
The council says it will have to make tough decisions in the coming weeks, blaming an increase in the cost of providing services to vulnerable children and adults.
The number of children being taken into care or needing support from the council has added over £13 million to the financial pressures being faced by the council, including £8 million extra funding for placements for children in care, £3 million to fund additional foster placements and £1 million to support children with disabilities.
MKCC is also having to find around £6 million extra to support vulnerable adults.
Last month, the new Labour government announced additional funding for local councils, including £600 million nationally to help fund social care and extra financial support for children’s services and SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) requirements.
The pressures facing councils nationally means that outside Milton Keynes, many councils are having to use reserves to balance their budgets, ask the government for additional support or are facing bankruptcy.
The MKCC Labour administration have published their financial plans for next year that propose:
- A 3% increase in council tax and a 2% increase in the social care precept, meaning a total 5% council tax increase
- Introducing charges for optional additional green waste collections after the first free collection
- Stopping some in-house charged social care services which are available from other providers
- Reducing the number of people the council employs
“Across the country, hundreds of councils are cutting services, and many councils have reached the end of the road and are effectively bankrupt,” said Cllr Lauren Townsend, Cabinet Member for Resources.
“Here in Milton Keynes, despite hard choices, we still do many things that other places have cut, and we propose keeping them. Our draft budget maintains weekly bin collections and a free garden waste collection for residents.
“We are proposing to continue to support people during the cost-of-living crisis. We want to carry on fixing potholes, invest in our highways and support public transport, and we still haven’t closed a single library while other places have seen them shuttered.
“We can do these things because we have a well-run, financially stable Labour council. It means tough choices, but the result is that the people of Milton Keynes still benefit from services that in other places simply no longer exist.”
“We know that increasing council tax is a difficult choice as many families face a squeeze on their income,” added Cllr Peter Marland, Leader of Milton Keynes City Council.
“We are also making other tough calls such as is bringing in a charge if people want more than one green bin and reducing the number of people the council employs.
"While the vast majority of council tax income the council collects is now spent on adult social care or children’s services, our draft budget seeks to balance funding those services our vulnerable local residents need while not making the deep cuts to services like weekly bin collections, closing libraries, financial support during the cost-of-living crisis or fixing potholes that have happened almost everywhere else.
“We are proposing a robust budget that meets our statutory obligations while still aiming to provide some of the best value for money services provided by any council in the country.”
