Council tax bills for Bury residents are set to rise by around three per cent from April according to the authority’s proposed budget.
Bury Council is planning to raise its element of the council tax bill by 2.94 per cent, with an additional one per cent rise on top of that in the form of a social care levy.
To balance the budget the council is planning to use £14,355,000 of its cash reserves in 2022/2023.
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It is also planning more than £5.9m of cuts and ‘efficiency savings’ in order to balance the books over the next financial year.
In a report to the council’s scrutiny committee, council leader Eamonn O’Brien said within the context of the continuing financial effects of the pandemic and uncertainty about government funding the process had been ‘the most complex and difficult of recent times’.
He said: ”Funding relating to social care remains unclear.
“Furthermore, the continued impact of the Covid-19 pandemic adds greater uncertainty and financial risk for some time to come.”
Pressures on the budget identified in the report included pay inflation of 4.4m and contractual inflation of £9.3m where the council has contracts
for which there is an agreement to increase by an inflationary amount each year.
The council is accredited as being a real living wage employer and has committed to paying its own lowest paid staff at least the value of the real living wage, which is higher than the national minimum wage and national living wage.
This commitment extends to working with other employers in the borough across public and private sectors to encourage them to do the same.
The budget provision to pay the real living wage amounts to £4.8m.
The council said it is experiencing increases in demand for some services such as adult social care and children transitioning to adult services.
Cuts and efficiency savings totalling £5.6m have also been identified for 2022/23.
These measures include the removal of council tax discounts on empty properties and introducing a ‘vacancy factor’ on pay budgets of £1.2m which would account for time lags in recruiting staff when no salary is paid out.
Efficiencies in school caretaking, catering and cleaning are budgeted to achieve another £184,000 in savings.
Adjusting the distribution of food waste caddy liners to households to one roll of 52 liners per year, rather than replacement on demand will achieve a saving of £50,000.
Other savings include It is proposed to increases in household recycling to deliver a reduction of four per cent in the volume of waste.
The report said moving four per cent of waste from the grey bin to the co-mingled bin and moving one per cent of waste from the grey bin to the bio waste bin, would see a saving of £255,000 per year.
The proposed budget will be decided on by the full council at a meeting on February 23.
