Councillors To Decide On Final 2014/15 Budget

The Financial Plan for the next 12 months is set to be approved by Councillors this week.

In the first Full Council meeting of the year, on Wednesday Wrexham Council’s 52 Councillors will meet to either agree or disagree with the financial plan and Council tax plan for the next year.

Last month members of the Executive Board agreed on a net budget of £227,333,600 for recommendation to the Full Council. The budgetary decision comes as a result of the ‘Reshaping Services’ / Cuts that the Council have to make in the next few years.

In total Wrexham Council have to make savings of around £45m for the next five years. This amounts to savings of around £13m for this year alone.

The report itself is pretty chunky and states: “The next few years will see an unprecedented challenge to the Council in terms of managing its finances and resources. It is evident from the final settlement that we face very real budgetary pressures, the Councils MTFS (medium term financial strategy) identifies our spending requirements for 2014/15 and beyond to 2016/17.

“It is clear from the projections that it is unlikely that the Council will be able to deliver any new or enhanced services unless it embraces the efficiency agenda. Wrexham County Borough Council has a good history of having achieved efficiencies through improvements to business processes and is well prepared to meet the challenges of
the future.”

Departments / categories included in the budget for the next 12 months are: Environment, housing and public protection, repairs and maintenance, life long learning and assets and economic development.

Arguably one of the more controversial and publicised topics included in the plan is the future of Plas Madoc Leisure Centre / Leisure Review.

Hours before the budget is set to be approved, a Scrutiny Committee will meet to discuss a ‘Call In’ decision of Plas Madoc. The meeting is open to the public and will take place in the Guildhall at 2pm.

Alongside the financial plan, Council tax for Band D is due to be set at £965.40. The report states that: “After taking account of the general grants and contribution from balances, the balance of net expenditure totalling £50,812,685 remains to be funded by council taxpayers.”

From this it is proposed to charge as a special expense part of the cost of footway lighting to the four community areas within the town (£4.48 at band D), the community of Llangollen Rural (£14.67 at band D), Chirk (£9.49 at band D) and Glyntraian (£11.26 at band D)

Also on the agenda for the meeting is ‘Organisation Structure’, which focuses on ‘considering the report of the Chief Executive’.

However this part of the meeting will be held under Part 2, which means the press and public will be booted out of the meeting room.

The full Financial Plan report (which is over 70 pages long) can be viewed on the Council website here.