 Each winter, the council refreshes its budget proposals which includes proposals for Council Tax in 2022/23.
In the next financial year (from April 2022 until March 2023), we expect to be spending £468million on services. This is known as the revenue budget and is largely funded by council tax and business rates.
The largest proportion of the funding is spent on care services for adults and children who are frail, disabled or vulnerable and need protection.
This budget also funds our core services such as refuse and recycling, roads, leisure, libraries, parks and countryside services.
A further £240million is expected to be spent from our capital budget. This includes roads, care homes, schools (including around £9million on specialist school places for SEND), leisure provision and other infrastructure projects. Our capital budget is funded through loans or selling land or buildings the council owns and reinvesting this money, not from Council Tax.
The budget also details how we plan to reduce costs by £9.6million as we continue to review how we work to ensure we are as efficient as possible.
But we continue to face big increases in demands, particularly in care for adults and children. We also recognise the pressures we face in key areas and plan to make specific investments in services providing care for more older people and adults with disabilities, providing more support for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and children who need our protection.
To bridge the gap between what we need and what we anticipate in terms of income, we propose an overall increase in Council Tax for Central Bedfordshire Council of 1.95%.
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1% of this increase would be only used to support social care services for vulnerable adults, either living in their own homes or in residential care.
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0.95% of this increase would be used to support our other services.
For a band D property this would result in a council tax increase of 61 pence per week.
Have your say
You can have your say on these proposals on our website.
For those who would prefer to fill in a paper copy of the survey, please call us on 0300 300 8000.
Responses to the consultation must be received before 31 January 2021.
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