District Council agrees budget

East Herts District Councillors have agreed a budget for the forthcoming financial year, with Band D Council Tax set to go up by £5 a year.

The budget takes into account the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and changes in rules on the assets the council can invest in, resulting in a predicted £2.1 million shortfall of income and additional expenditure.  The council will meet some of these from its financial reserves in the short term.

Although the government has announced that the Core Spending Power of local authorities will increase by an average of 4.6%, which includes councils levying the maximum council tax increase, for East Herts the increase in core spending power is just 0.3%. Core Spending Power is a measure of the resources available to local authorities to fund service delivery. It sets out the money that has been made available to local authorities through the Local Government Finance Settlement (LGFS).

To enable the council to carry on providing vital services, a Band D property will see bills rise by £5 a year to £179.09 from 1st April 2021. The rise means that residents of these properties will pay £3.44 a week towards funding all the services provided by East Herts Council.

Commenting on the budget, Councillor Geoffrey Williamson, Deputy Leader and Executive Member for Financial Sustainability, said: "Managing our budget for the coming years is a challenge in the face of reducing income and increasing demands as a result of COVID-19. 

"This continued financial uncertainty unfortunately means that we will need to raise the council tax rate in April. We only get to keep 10p of every £1 of council tax collected and like the vast majority of councils across the country, the pandemic has put a strain on our finances so we have to cut our cloth accordingly in order to protect our vital statutory services for residents and businesses."

Over the next four years the council will look to save £6.2million by generating income through charging for some non-statutory services such as garden waste collection as well as transforming the way the council operates internally.

Cllr Williamson added: "We will be reviewing the services we provide and the way we provide them. We will be looking at all our processes to improve efficiencies and these reviews will help us to provide the right services to the right standards for less cost.

"Moving forward we want to better use technology to create online access to our services so customers can do everything they need to on the website 24/7.  We will get better deals from new contracts, and build upon the home-based working that has been necessary during the pandemic, so we spend less on office buildings and travel costs.  Our aim is to keep the services we offer broadly the same but the savings we need to make will mean some tough choices ahead."

Council Tax funds the spending of three local authorities and Herts Police, with 76% going to the county council, 11% to the police, 9% to East Herts Distrrict Council and 4% to town and parish councils.