SOUTH Gloucestershire Council will spend almost £216 million on services next year, according to the budget agreed at a meeting of the full council on Wednesday.

The spending plans, which include a further £202million for schools, comes with a council tax increase of 5.99 per cent, 2.99 per cent as a general increase and a further three per cent adult social care levy, which will raise £9.7million to be spent exclusively on services supporting the most vulnerable adults in the community.

The budget papers show that while the council’s finances are projected to remain in balance for the coming three years, this is only by using reserves set aside for this purpose and delivering additional savings.

Challenges remain in the medium term, caused by falling government grants and increased costs and demand for services.

To help the council in planning for the future, the budget makes projections for the next four years, as this also helps to put saving plans into context, with the council keen to plan and make contingencies for the long term, to avoid having to make in-year savings due to unforeseen circumstances.

SGC leader Cllr Matthew Riddle said: “I am determined, for the sake of frontline services, to move forward with a balanced budget. In doing so, we are prioritising our most vulnerable residents with significant increases in funding for services for vulnerable adults and children.

“These are challenging times, but I believe we have and will continue to meet the challenges before us. The plans approved today will mean that the everyday services we all rely upon will continue to be delivered and we have also made some additional commitments to support schools, care leavers and those looking for a home.

“I know that some will feel the squeeze of rising council tax, but while we continue to look for ways to be as efficient and cost effective as possible, we must find ways to replace the funding which used to come from Government and to meet rising demand for services.

While the budget were eventually passed, opposition councillors chose to oppose some of the proposals, with Labour and Liberal Democrats saying that the nature of £36million in additional cuts that had been approved were still “unclear”.

Labour leader Cllr Pat Rooney said: “Our communities and residents are suffering because of the Tories’ austerity ideology and their obvious disdain for local government over the past eight years.

“Officers reported that between 2016 and 2020, local government’s funding will reduce by £4.9billion or 68 per cent.

“In South Gloucestershire we now face an additional £36 million of cuts on top of the millions already stripped out of the budget and the hundreds of jobs lost in recent years.

“This will pile on the pain, as the new savings programmes also seek to maximise current income streams and state that the council will no longer be able to do as much.”

Lib Dem group Deputy Leader, Cllr Clare Young, said: "We know the Conservatives plan to cut £36m from the Council’s budget between 2019 and 2022, including over £16million from adult and children’s social services. It seems extraordinary that councillors would commit to such massive cuts without knowing how services will be affected.

She added that while they have been told that “belts have to be tightened” in times of austerity, South Gloucestershire had already done so “pretty damn hard in recent years”. 

"There will come a point, not very long from now I fear, when there will be simply nothing left to cut. I didn’t come into local government to see it stripped to the bone and unable to help people we were elected to serve.

“It’s time that, instead of simply defending the cuts being handed down from their party in Westminster, this council’s Conservative administration, and South Gloucestershire’s Conservative MPs use their influence to push back against the cuts from central government.

"If it turns out that they have no such influence within their own party then local residents might reasonably begin to ask what is the point in having a Conservative-run council at all?”   

"