Difficult Decisions - Further Cuts
Budget Consultation 2020/21
Over the past decade our funding has been slashed by Welsh Government. We’ve been forced to cut our budget by over £62 million since 2008, and we’ve had to reduce our workforce by over 600 people. Now we’re being forced to make even more cuts.
Councils across the UK are going through a desperate time, and in Wrexham, the funding we get from the UK and Welsh governments is already below the Welsh average-per-person. And it’s about to get worse. We’re expecting even less funding this year.
The uncertainty around national politics makes it hard to predict right now, but we think we’ll need to save at least £5.4 million in 2019-20…and maybe as much as £7.2 million. What’s more, we think we’re going to be at least £9.8 million short over the next two years.
It all depends on what the UK and Welsh governments decide is most important…and we won’t know for sure until November. Although Wrexham’s funding has been hammered by Welsh Government over the last few years, we’ve managed to make savings by being more efficient, and we’ve tried desperately to avoid cutting services wherever possible.
However, there’s no question we’re going to have to cut services this time, and stop doing some things altogether.
We don’t think we have a choice, but…
The council has drawn up proposals to save money, and launched a public consultation to get feedback.
The proposals include:
- Generating more income from community resource centres and the Memorial Hall.
- Charging more for certain services (in adult social care for example) by charging the actual cost of providing the service.
- Introducing three-weekly bin collections for black/blue bins.
- Lowering the standard of road repairs.
- Increasing parking fees in our car parks.
- Changing the way we deliver events and activities in our country parks, or stopping altogether.
- Considering an increase in Council Tax of at least 5.5%.
The consultation – called ‘Difficult Decisions – Further Cuts’ – will run until November 13, 2019, and should only take around five minutes to fill-in online.
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