Historic vote for Warwickshire County Council budget
An historic vote last night saw all three political parties sitting on Warwickshire County Council vote unanimously in favour of its 2007/2008 budget.
Funding this will mean a 4.91 per cent increase on last year’s in Council Tax.
The council meeting yesterday started at 10am and after more than 9 hours of debating and negotiation the budget was agreed with a unanimous vote.
Cllr Alan Farnell (Conservative), Leader of Warwickshire County Council, said: “It’s a historic time in setting the Council Tax budget in Warwickshire. Never in my experience has a budget been agreed by all three political parties.
“All three parties have compromised, and we’ve ended up with a budget which we agree is the best we can agree in the circumstance for the people of Warwickshire. We are particularly pleased to continue our policy on improving access to Warwickshire County Council’s services for our residents.
“All three parties have today agreed to seek a ministerial meeting to discuss better funding from Central Government in the future.”
Cllr June Tandy, Labour group Leader, said: “We spent a long day in negotiations trying to reach an agreement on next year’s county council Council Tax budget.
“We were (in the Labour Group) determined that our key priorities – adult services, the fire service, community safety, and economic development – were all protected.
“I am sure this is a budget to serve communities across Warwickshire.”
Cllr Jerry Roodhouse, Liberal Democrat group Leader, said: “We’re pleased with the final outcome and believe we have a good budget for the people of Warwickshire.
“I’m encouraged to see many of our key priorities, such as work to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies, money for area youth forums, neighbourhood watch schemes, and investment in local arts projects through area committees being included in the budget.”
At 7.30pm tonight Council approved a 4.91 per cent increase in Council Tax to £1045.21 on a Band D property, an increase of 94p per week.
The increase of 4.91 per cent has been agreed to maintain standards within all the key service areas. Some of our services include:
· 250 schools with 11,000 teachers and support staff and more than 76,000 pupils.
· We maintain 2,300 miles or road and eight country parks which attracted 647,000 visitors last year.
· We have 19 fire stations that have around 10,000 call outs a year.
· More than three million books, tapes and CDS are issued each year from our libraries
and over 85,000 people visited our museums.
· We support about 2,000 people in residential or nursing care and
provide about 20,000 hours of home care in the community each week.