Council tax rise of 4% on the cards

A council tax rise of four per cent is on the cards as Ceredigion’s draft budget passes the first hurdle at cabinet.

Cabinet members approved the draft budget and recommendation to increase council tax as the higher than expected Welsh Government settlement was “welcomed with open arms.”

Council leader Cllr Ellen ap Gwynn said on January 28: “This is the first time in ten years or so, at least since I’ve been leader, that we have had an increase in the settlement to the council, an uplift of 4.2 per cent, this is of course welcomed with open arms.

“It does mean we will have more funding to distribute, it does not mean that we can take our foot off the accelerator, as we have not heard from London yet the plans for funding local area in the future.”

The aggregated external finance for Ceredigion is £107,646,000 without grant transfers for teachers pay and pensions.

The overall budget total is £151,233,000 an increase of £7.6million.

A recommendation that council tax for a Band D property be set at £1,364.82 for 2020/21 an increase of four per cent will be made to full council next month.

This will generate an extra £2million.

Cllr ap Gwynn said that council tax increases of 3.5 per cent, 4.5 per cent and 5 per cent were modelled “to see where that would leave us as far as the bottom line is concerned.”

“No further cuts” would be needed if a council tax rise of four per cent was approved.

Services would all receive an uplift of 2.2 per cent to their budgets along with specific allocations to some areas.

This includes support for the under pressure adult social care budgets are set to receive a budget increase of more than £2million.

The plan to move the council to a ‘paperless’ system will be funded by top slicing £423,000 from the central budget rather than individual service budgets and a separate fund for out of county placements will be set up.