Households will pay at least an extra £34 for Gloucestershire County Council’s share of council tax from April.

Councillors approved proposals to increase residents’ council tax bills by 3.99 per cent yesterday, which includes two per cent for adult social care.

It means the average Band D household in Gloucestershire will pay £5.16 more a month in council tax in the new financial year.

The rise in council tax will raise £6m for services across the county, and an extra £6.3m to cope with the rising demand in adult social care, which the council has been ordered to ring-fence.

Also approved was the authority’s £468m budget for the next year, which includes £26.5m for new schools, an extra £12.5m for children’s services and £5m to upgrade traffic light signals.

How much extra every household band will pay during 2020/21

Band A: £34.31

Band B: £40.15

Band C: £45.88

Band D: £51.62

Band E: £63.09

Band F: £74.56

Band G: £86.03

Band H: £103.24

The budget will pay for new major schemes in Gloucestershire as of April this year.

£73.6m for schools and children and family services, including £20m towards a £30m new secondary school in Cheltenham, £6.5m towards a new Special School , £3.2m towards the expansion of The Cotswold School, £6.2m towards increasing the number of primary school places in the Bishop’s Cleeve area and £2.5m towards the expansion of Leckhampton Primary School;

An additional £12.9m into children’s services;

In the region of £14.5m into Gloucester South West Bypass, Arle Court, Junction 11, Honeybourne cycle route extension, Gloucester to Quedgeley and Cheltenham to Bishop’s Cleeve’s cycle tracks;

£1.5m to ensure GFRS’s firefighters have new and improved life saving equipment and to increase the service’s prevention and protection work.

£700k towards flood alleviation work. This forms part of investment over the coming years of more than £5.3m, which will significantly reduce the risk of flooding to hundreds of homes in the county;

£3.1m to ensure delivering Broadband across the county;

Almost £5.0m to upgrade street lights and traffic signals;

£1m for councillors to invest in local highways schemes.

Rival political groups on the county council proposed a range of amendments to the budget in the meeting.

Several were refused but among the ones which were approved are:

£50,000 to improve bus shelters (Liberal Democrats);

£10,000 for a one-off scheme for period poverty (Labour);

Give community libraries in Gloucestershire an extra £2,500 (Green);

£40,000 for care leavers’ support on driving lessons and digital convective (Labour);

£50,000 for renewal of funding of suicide prevention (Liberal Democrat).