THANET DISTRICT COUNCIL BUDGET 2010/11

Council services have been preserved and the lowest Council Tax rise in at least a decade delivered in Thanet District Council's 2010/11 budget, despite a massive slump in income.

The budget was approved last night (Thursday 25 February) at a full Council meeting, with Thanet's share of the Council Tax rising by just 2.46%, less than 10p per week for most homes in the area. Council Tax increases of just 2.5% are also planned for the next four years.

In the past year, the council has seen income fall by more than three quarters of a million pounds, with reductions in the money it receives from planning fees, parking, bulky waste collections and land charges. Despite this, a balanced budget has been produced, not only for 2010/11, but also for the following four years.

From 2011/12, the council is forecasting that its budget from central government will be cut each year by 3%, meaning savings are needed of more than £6 million over the next five years. To achieve this, a number of proposals were agreed, including reviewing staff contracts, merging functions internally and sharing services with other councils in East Kent. Plans to share housing, waste and a range of other services such as IT, building control, revenues and benefits and customer services were agreed at a meeting of full Council last week (Thursday 18 February).

Cllr. Martin Wise, Cabinet Member for Finance and Corporate Services, said: "This year has not been an easy year for anyone, as many people will know themselves. The situation is no different in local government, with all councils seeing their income falling. Fortunately, in Thanet, we took quick action to address that and made savings to ensure that we could balance the books for this year. In 2010/11, we at least know exactly how much money we're getting from central government, which makes up the majority of our funding, as that figure's already been set.

"From next year, there's no guarantee on that. I'm sure that most people will agree, whoever wins the next election, they're going to need to make cuts and that's going to impact on everyone in the public sector. We're already budgeting for a cut of 3% and we're determined that the shortfall should not come from the taxpayers' purse.

"We've already taken steps to maximise efficiencies in all our services in recent years and that's why we're now looking at how we can make even more savings by sharing our services with other councils in East Kent. We need to make radical changes to ensure that we save the £6 million plus that we need to find over the next five years. I'm sure residents would agree that they would rather we did that than make cuts to the services they receive from us."