Looking to the future despite budget challenges

Bury Council is allocating an extra £400,000 to help the borough’s most vulnerable through the cost of living crisis and show residents that it is on their side during these tough times.

The move was announced at tonight’s (Wed 22 Feb) council meeting, which set the budget and council tax for the financial year 2023/24.

Councillor Richard Gold, cabinet member for finance and communities, told the meeting that the council needed to find £31 million to balance the budget.

“We are facing tremendous financial challenges, primarily caused by the high rate of inflation,” he said. “Our energy costs have soared, along with the cost of supplies, while a national shortage of labour means we are having to use expensive outside agencies to provide essential services.

“On top of this, we are having to meet ever increasing demand for services from those most in need; from homeless people to those leaving hospital and requiring care, the cost of which is twice as high as before the Covid pandemic.

“Unfortunately, we are not getting the additional funding we need to meet these demands. This comes on top of a decade of austerity which has stripped more than £100 million from our budgets.”

Cllr Gold added: “Despite these challenges, we will continue to target support towards the most needy and vulnerable in our society – this is what residents have repeatedly told us should be our first priority. This is why we funded free school meals during the holidays, school uniform grants, and a range of measures to help Bury people through the cost of living crisis.

“And we’re still investing in services which everyone uses, which is why we’re putting another £10 million into improving the condition of our roads. These measures are a clear message that we are on the side of our residents during these tough times.”

Tonight’s meeting agreed to allocate extra money to:

• New council tax support (£100,000) – to provide grants of £100 to 1,000 households who are financially struggling but not eligible for the current council tax support scheme. Criteria for eligibility is being drawn up to ensure this targeted support reaches those most in need.
• Community grants (£100,000) – providing £20,000 per neighbourhood, to be decided by councillors and local neighbourhood teams to improve their localities.
• Freeze Bury Market rents for an extra year (£87,000) - to help traders recover from the effects of Covid lockdowns and with anticipated disruption during the £20 million renovation of the market.
• Extend councillors’ discretionary budgets (£51,000) - £1,000 for each councillor to spend on local projects identified by residents.
• Support fund for children in care and care leavers (£50,000) - to support our young people with the challenges posed by the cost of living crisis.
• Veterans and cadets support fund (£20,000) – to help them cope with financial challenges and made worse by the closure of the Drill Hall.

Members also agreed to support Bury’s cultural offer: with £20,000 for events to build on Bury’s year as GM Town of Culture, and £14,000 to celebrate the upcoming coronation of King Charles III and commemorate the life of Queen Elizabeth II, involving schools across the borough in creative projects.

And, responding to public concerns, they also agreed to spend £125,000 to deal with the backlog in tree maintenance, exacerbated in recent years by Covid, storms and diseases such as Ash Die Back.

Bury Art Museum will not be closed – instead, members agreed to pursue a strategy of increasing the venue’s income through hosting commercial events.

Councillor Eamonn O’Brien, leader of the council, said: “While we need to support our most vulnerable here and now, we are also making great progress on our longer term and ambitious plans to regenerate our borough.

“Plans to regenerate our town centres in Bury, Radcliffe and Prestwich are progressing well and sit alongside the development of town plans for Ramsbottom and Whitefield. We’ll have more news on these very shortly. These transformational projects will help to secure the future of our local economy, with local jobs, skills and investment, while improving the environment. Working together, we can ensure that our borough remains a great place in which to live, work and study for decades to come.”

At tonight’s meeting, the council voted to increase the council tax by 2.99% for general council services, plus a 2% levy to be spent exclusively on social care. Levies added by the Greater Manchester Mayor, police and fire services add a further 0.2% to the total bill.

More than half of the 84,000 houses in Bury fall into the bottom two bands (A and B), so the increase for them equates to £1.37 a week for a Band A house and £1.76 a week for a Band B house.

Council house rents will increase by the Government’s cap of 7%. Money raised from this can only be spent on social housing.