General Fund budget consultation 2023/24
Canterbury City Council will set its budget for 2023/24 on 22 February 2023.
This consultation asked for your views on the proposals and our suggested council tax level. It closed on Monday 9 January. All feedback will be taken into account when councillors meet to agree the budget.
This year’s budget proposals are designed to ensure the council continues to deliver the services that really matter to people like effective bin collections, robust enforcement, quick graffiti removal and helping the homeless.
This is in the face of significant challenges to its finances posed by rapidly rising costs, uncertainty over funding from the government and an expected increase in demand for council services given the turbulent economic times that lay ahead.
With prices measured by the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) currently rising at the rate of 10% and the Bank of England predicting a peak of 13% in the coming months, the council is predicting an increase in direct costs like its energy bills and indirect costs passed on by its contractors of up to £1.8million.
The draft budget proposes to balance the books by:
- building on the council’s track record of delivering savings by becoming more and more efficient – it found £1.9m of those in the current financial year
- increasing Canterbury City Council’s element of residents’ council tax bills, which makes up 11% of the overall total, by just under 10p per week or £4.95 a year or 2.24% for an average Band D property – which is substantially below inflation and therefore represents a real-term cut in bills
- increasing fees and charges by CPI (currently 10%) to cover the costs of the service that is being charged for
- fishermen’s dues, scrap metal licences, taxi licences, boat and punt licences and allotment fees will only see an increase of half of CPI, so an actual increase of 5% which represents a real-terms cut in prices
- using reserves, the money the council has saved to be used when times are tough, to pay for one-off costs in order to smooth out financial bumps in the road
The council’s draft capital budget, spending on physical assets like buildings, includes a commitment to pay for previously-agreed projects as well as replacing litter bins, improvements to some of the street lighting provided by the city council and the creation of a contingency fund should existing projects suffer from inflationary increases in costs.
The following documents outline the proposals in full:
Financial outlook and draft budget – Cabinet report
Summary financial plan to 2024/25
Detailed financial plan to 2024/25
Schedule of reserves and balances
Published: 11 November 2022