Share your views on the Council-wide proposals
The ‘Unprecedented Times’ budget consultation has now closed. Thank you to everyone who took part. Your feedback has made a difference by helping to shape the Council budget. A copy of the feedback report is available here. |
Council-wide services include areas such as human resources, finance, ICT, legal, transformation and data gathering, and engaging with residents.
A key priority in this area is to enable an efficient and empowering council, particularly as we move forward from COVID-19.
We have developed a number of proposals to balance the budget and ensure there is enough money to tackle these priorities.
We want to hear:
- Your views on the budget proposals
- Ideas for further savings that could be made.
To find out more please watch our animation or read about the detailed council-wide proposals here.
Share your views:
There are lots of ways you can get involved, just click on one of the tabs below.
An easy read survey will be available shortly.
This consultation will be open until 3 December 2020.
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We may be in a position where further savings need to be made if funding from Central Government is less than anticipated. This will require more difficult decisions but potential areas we could look at include:
- reducing service standards, for example in highways and street cleaning
- changing our Council tax reduction scheme which provides relief for people on low incomes with Council tax bills
- increasing fees and charges above inflation
- further reductions in buildings owned by the Council, to reduce costs but also to secure investment from the sale of property
- further use of technology to deliver services.
Do you have any other ideas that could be explored if further savings are required?
Please do not share any personal information about yourself or anybody else here. For example only use first names, not full names.
View All Ideas5 months ago
Reactive Increase in Council Tax
It is all too easy to "react" when finances are stretched / exceeded by raising Council Tax and thus increasing income. CWAC MUST resist this trend. EVERY element of spend and cost must be challenged without bias to look at what the Council is getting in return for its money. Immediate priority I believe. Yes there have been increases due to the Covid Pandemic but in parallel there have been significant savings e.g Staff furloughed to Gov payment support, reduction in energy at closed buildings (e.g. Leisure) , reductions in travel and associated fuel costs, closures of Civic amenities sites plus I expect many more SO clear visibility of excess spend v reduced/saved spend needs to be made clear
5 months ago
Procurement and Contracts
Full review of all spends again to ensure best value v specification. Thorough review of all 3rd Party contracts . Reduce contract duration without jeopardising competitive prices Apply healthy PENALTIES for works not completed within agreed / negotiated timescales
6 months ago
Review the Park and Ride
A review should be undertaken since some times of the day (even pre covid) the services are extremely quiet. It's therefore a good idea to look at reducing the frequency from every 12 to every 15 minutes at these times. This would save a significant amount of money and as it would be done at little used times, it should have no impact on the users.
6 months ago
'On request' Green bin collection during winter & late autumn.
During the months when fewer people are doing gardening, make green bin collections by request only (request via app, website, calling). Even by keeping the same collection day, it saves bin men driving around the streets just in case. This helps the environment and congestion with trucks travelling less miles, it would also mean the trucks can get the rounds done quicker so there is less wages
5 months ago
Fund Generation from New Build
There has been over the last 5-8 years significant new house building developments across the CWAC region. Currently there are many new developments in progress and I expect many in application. Most of these will have been "passed or signed off" on the amount of Section 106 monies agreed. These monies are allocated to assist with the local infrastructure /costs / Roads / Healthcare / Education etc etc How much is there currently in the "pot" and how much is projected for the current/future applications? This is I suggest a "contingency fund that should be considered
Further information
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Unprecedented Times Feedback Report (pdf format) (645 KB) (pdf)
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Unprecedented Times full document (PDF version) (1.01 MB) (pdf)
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Unprecedented Times easy read survey (PDF format) (7.77 MB) (pdf)
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Council-wide detailed proposals (accessible format)
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Glossary of terms used in the budget proposals (accessible format)
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Unprecedented times - foreword and financial context (accessible format)
