Council Budget Puts Priority On Maintaining and Improving Services

8.00.00am GMT Wed 20th Feb 2008

At this afternoon's meeting of Leeds City Council, Councillor Richard Brett (Lib Dem, Burmantofts and Richmond Hill), Deputy Leader of the Council and Executive Board Member responsible for Finance will propose the Council's Budget for 2008/2009.

Councillor Brett said "In proposing Leeds City Council Budget this afternoon I am disappointed to have to propose an increase in Council Tax of 4.7%, but I and my colleagues in the administration believe that we must avoid cuts in front line services if at all possible. Indeed it is interesting to note that the opposition Labour Group seem to agree with us, their amendment makes no proposal to change the Council Tax increase we are putting forward and the changes they are proposing to our spending priorities amount to only £2.7 million, less than 0.6% of the budget.

"The background to this Budget is well known, the Council faces cuts in key funding streams from central Government which mean that overall the Government is giving us less funding than last year. Particularly damaging are the cuts in Neighbourhood Renewal Funding in a City which is the 4th worst employment deprived Council in England, so I am glad to note that today one of our local MPs obtained a Commons Adjournment debate to raise this issue at Westminster. It is good to note that concerns about this loss of funding are not just restricted to the administration parties at the Civic Hall, but stretch widely across the whole of Leeds.

"Even so, we have been able to redirect resources within our budget to further support key areas and I intend to draw the Council's particular attention to :-

· -a 6% increase in funding for Adult Social Care in the financial year 2008/09. In extra resources this means £10.5 million which we are doing because we know and understand the need for more money in this area.

· -an extra £2.6 million for the Environment and Neighbourhoods budget on various aspects of the expansion of our waste strategy programme. This includes more for bin replacement, increased education to support the waste strategy to teach people how to recycle and a significant expansion of the brown bin garden waste collection. This will put us on course for a household recycling rate of over 30% by the end of financial year (March 2009).

· -in Community Safety we had a number of key projects funded from the Neighbourhood Renewal Funding, but despite that being cut by 40% we have made it a priority to maintain all the Neighbourhood Wardens, PCSOs and mobile CCTV which had been funded from NRF.

So as ever with this administration it is always safety first!"