Bridgend Council’s Cabinet will discuss the draft budget for 2023-24 later this week, including a list of proposed cuts and savings (pdf).
In total, the council is expected to seek £3.26million worth of cuts and savings in the next financial year and a total of £17.8million across the next four financial years.
Some service areas face losing all of their funding in the draft budget. These service areas include:
- Home-to-college transport (saving £323,000 across two years) – This move would require a full 12-week public consultation and presents several risks to the council and Bridgend College. The policy has been suggested before but seemingly never implemented. Given the current concerns around home-school transport, it’s likely to pile further pressure on the council.
- Strategic Regeneration Fund (saving £279,000) – This would impact match funding for smaller-scale regeneration projects and is said: “could lead to a loss of private sector investment”.
- Fly-tipping enforcement (saving £200,000) – The entire commercial waste enforcement team would be lost, impacting the cleanliness of the county. It would also limit the council’s ability to take enforcement action against businesses that litter or fly-tip, including local fly-tipping hotspots such as Wildmill.
In another draft proposal likely to cause controversy, the schools budget could be cut by £2.12million in 2023-24 and £5.3million in total across the next four financial years through “efficiency savings” – mainly from staffing. The report says this could lead to a loss of at least one teacher in each primary school and up to five teachers at each secondary school over the next four years.
Other proposals include charging blue badge holders for parking at council-run car parks, cutting funding for RNLI lifeguards by 75%, closing recycling centres for one weekday per week and increasing charges for garden and bulky waste collection.
It’s worth stressing that it’s a list of draft budget proposals and nothing has been finalised yet. The draft budget will need to go through full scrutiny with the council’s committees – a process which starts this week.
The final budget is on course to be ready by the end of February/early March.
