Households in Newcastle will be hit with a 4% council tax hike, while council bosses have signed off on £23m of budget cuts.
Leaders agreed financial plans on Wednesday that will also see more than 50 jobs axed at Newcastle City Council. Car parking charges will rise and social services will have to reduce their spending by £6m, while local authority bosses rejected calls to reinstate free parking for disabled blue badge holders and delay the closure of a council depot in the East End.
Labour councillor Paul Frew, the council’s cabinet member for finance, blamed a “litany of Government failures” since 2010 for the dire financial circumstances facing the authority, which has had its annual budget slashed by £341m since 2010. He said that a 3.99% council tax rise, which includes a 2% adult social care precept, was a decision “not taken lightly” and was “entirely necessary” to cover rising costs in care services.
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Coun Frew added: “For local government they [the national Government] have only made things worse through real-term cuts in funding, short-term funding settlements that don’t allow us to plan far in advance, and nonsense beauty pageant funding that we can’t rely on. We still don’t know when levelling up is meant to arrive or, frankly, what the Government ever meant by it.”
The council budget includes:
- A council tax increase of 3.99%, including a 2% adult social care precept increase, costing a typical Band A property an extra 94p a week and £1.42 a week to a Band D property;
- Cutting £3.24m from adult social care services by “remodelling care assessments but maintaining adequate support for those who need it”;
- Cutting £3.3m from the children, education and skills budget by “safely reducing demand for services”;
- Increased fees for parking in council-run car parks, the exact details of which have not yet been announced;
- Reducing funding to homelessness services by £185,000;
- Saving £1.25m from “non-essential expenditure” in areas including overtime pay and taxi fares in children’s social care;
- A “review” of the Bikeability cycling training in schools.
A total of 54 council jobs will also be lost, though 40 of those set to go are currently vacant posts.
Coun Colin Ferguson, leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition, agreed that successive Conservative governments had been a “disaster” for Newcastle, but said the council must now “face up to the new reality” that it cannot rely on the funding sources of the past and should have a “ground-up rebuilding of the budget”.
He told colleagues in the council chamber on Wednesday night that residents were “unimpressed” by council services and feel ignored – recalling tales of locals left without their heating repaired during a cold snap, left stranded by broken lifts in tower blocks, and frustrated by deteriorating playgrounds.
The Lib Dems proposed a string of amendments to the budget – including reinstating free blue badge parking in council car parks, introducing a workplace parking levy in the city centre, delaying the closure of the council depot in Byker’s Allendale Road, and trialling measures to slash energy use in council facilities.
All of those ideas were voted down by the ruling Labour group, whose leader Nick Kemp again called on ministers to reform the council tax system so that income is spread out more equally between councils – rather than wealthy areas in the South being able to generate far more.
Coun Kemp added that not putting council tax up by the maximum 5% allowed by the Government this year was a “recognition of the challenges our residents are facing” in a cost of living crisis.
Liberal Democrat Wendy Taylor warned that the cuts to social care budgets risked leaving the council too reliant on support for vulnerable people from voluntary and community groups that are already facing a “perfect storm” of problems, including staff shortages and a drop in volunteers.
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