Council Budget 2019 – Have your say

Birmingham City Council has opened it’s budget consultation for 2019/20.

You can view the proposals and make your comment here

The council needs to make additional savings of £86 million , on top of the annual savings, totalling about £690 million that the Council has already made from 2010/11 up to 2018/19. This will mean that they will have reduced spending on services to residents and businesses by total annual savings of around £775 million over a twelve year period.

The council propose an increase of 2.99% in Council Tax in 2019/20 and 1.99% in later years. In addition they propose to raise a “Social Care Precept” by increasing Council Tax by a further 2% in 2019/20 to provide extra funding to meet the costs of social care. This would result in a combined increase in Council Tax of 4.99% in 2019/20

Clearly the council are in a difficult position. However there are still a number of questionable priorities. And your say is important in helping get it right.

One proposal for example includes a 25% cut in the budget of the flytipping team by £300,000. They will only investigate where there is a high likelihood of prosecution, which in reality means they will leave themselves with little choice but to pick up all dumping without investigation.  In contrast the settlement following last year’s waste strike means another £2.5m has to go into basic waste collection services.

 So we will have the crazy situation where you cannot overstuff your wheelie bin but if you dump it in bags round the corner it will be collected.

Please make your comments. It is important we all make our voices heard.