County Council looks to protect front-line services
Warwickshire County Council Cabinet has published its draft budget proposals with the emphasis on protecting front-line services and minimising the impact on council taxpayers.
At Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, councillors agreed to look at a number of changes to the proposals made by officers.
Among the changes to the draft proposals, the council will be looking again at the funding of the County Music Service to ensure that music provision remains accessible to all young people. The original proposal was to save £417,000 from the service.
Other areas such as the Stratford park-and-ride scheme, the mobile library service and the adult PHILLIS (Promoting Health and Independence through Low Level Integrated Support) service are being reconsidered by councillors.
In addition, the council will be concentrating on protecting services affecting vulnerable children, including spending an extra £70,000 to respond to the recent pressures on the authority as a direct impact of the Haringey investigation which has resulted in an increase of referrals from partner agencies and members of the public.
Warwickshire’s safeguarding services are extremely well regarded and the extra investment in this area will ensure the social care teams involved can continue to make secure, safe decisions.
Cllr Alan Farnell, Leader of Warwickshire County Council, said: “We recognise that the detail of the proposals may need to change over the next couple of months as more information becomes available and we continue to undertake further investigations.
“The financial position which we find ourselves in is unprecedented in recent times, with volatile energy prices and inflation and falling interest rates. This means we have to look in depth at what we have to do, what we should do, and what we want to do.
“We are aiming to keep council tax increases down as much as we can when we present our final budget proposal to full council on February 3.”
The new set of proposals will mean an increase in 4.9 per cent to the taxpayer. The cabinet meets to discuss the budget on January 29, prior to a full council debate on February 3.