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15
Jan
Community spending set to be slashed despite hike in council tax
A North Yorkshire Council budget for schemes that help local community schemes looks set to be halved.
The council currently awards all 90 elected councillors £10,000 a year to spend on specific activities that promote the social, economic, or environmental wellbeing of the communities they represent.
But it has proposed reducing each councillor’s sum, known as a locality budget, to £5,000 in a move that could save £450,000 a year.
Councillors usually allocate their locality budgets on several projects within their divisions rather than spend it all on one activity.
Examples of what it paid for last year include a printer for Grewelthorpe Parish Council, a security camera for Ripon Spa Bowling Club, nets for Bilton Cricket Club, a defibrilator in Bewerley. refurbishing shower facilities for Harrogate Homeless Project, paying for a big screen that showed the Glastonbury Festival at Knaresborough’s Party in the Castle and vehicle-activated speeding signs throughout the district.
The Stray Ferret compiled a list in June of how every councillor in the Harrogate district allocated the sum last year. Click here to see it.
£5 million deficit
Locality budgets will be considered as part of wider cuts by the council’s Conservative executive on Tuesday next week.
The council announced yesterday it planned to increase council tax by 4.99% in April, which is the maximum permitted without a referendum.
It said it faces a £5 million deficit.
Asked about locality budgets by the Stray Ferret, a council spokesperson said:
Following the financial settlement which has been announced by the government and the decision not to provide the rural services delivery grant which allocated £14.3 million in funding to North Yorkshire Council each year, there is a recognition that all areas of the council need to be reviewed and that includes locality budget grants.
After next week’s executive meeting, the council’s proposed budget will be discussed at a full council meeting on February 14, when a decision will be taken by elected members.
Councillor Hannah Gostlow, a Liberal Democrat who represents Knaresborough East, said she was "very concerned" about the reduction in locality budgets.
Cllr Gostlow, whose budget funded the big screen for Knaresborough's Party in the Castle, said:
Without these grants many groups would not be able to finance much needed projects, which support and improve the lives of our residents.
In some instances the grants provide the seed funding to allow projects to commence, by allowing access to additional larger external funding. In other cases they can provide the final piece of the jigsaw which allows a project to take place.
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