We are investing more in vital care services over the next year despite having to find more than £12 million through savings, additional income and grant income changes to balance our books.
Our budget for 2020/21 aims to help address the rising demand for social care by allocating a further £4.9 million to towards support for vulnerable children who need specialist care and £4.1 million for adult social care.
The budget also invests in a range of capital projects that support our ambition for Plymouth to become a net carbon neutral city by 2030.
The additional funding for social care is included in the £193.6m revenue budget agreed by the full council on Monday 24 February.
The revenue budget helps provide more than 300 council services including street cleansing, maintaining roads, running libraries, supporting schools and providing social care.
To help maintain services while costs and demand increase and Government funding through the revenue grant declines, Council Tax bills will rise 1.99 per cent.
The Council also agreed to a further two per cent precept specifically to help towards the additional costs of providing adult social care.
This means the tax for services delivered by the Council will rise by 3.99 per cent.
The Council also agreed a capital budget that will invest £893 million in Plymouth up until 2023/4.
This will deliver a wide range of projects, including:
- Helping protect the environment by installing on-street electric vehicle charging and replacing a big proportion of the Council’s petrol and diesel fleet with electric vehicles.
- Reducing congestion and making journeys easier through major road schemes such as the Forder Valley Link Road.
- Delivering hundreds more affordable homes through the Plan for Homes
- Supporting the new Extra Care housing scheme at Millbay
- Delivering further improvements to Central Park and to play areas across the city
- Growing the economy by further expansion at Langage business Park and the next phase of the Oceansgate development
- Supporting the major regeneration of the area around Plymouth Railway Station
- Delivering further improvements to the condition of highways and footpaths
- Developing the cycle network in the north of the city
Proposing the budget, Council leader Tudor Evans, said the Council had weathered 10 years of austerity by being innovative and ambitious in securing investment to securing the city’s growth, which had led to a large number of big projects currently come to fruition.
He said: “We’ve come out fighting. We’ve found new ways of doing things, reshaped how we deliver many of our services, found new ways of generating income, joined up with our partners wherever possible and maximised the use of our assets.
“We’ve done it together through our dogged determination to remain ambitious for Plymouth, no matter what.
“This is now paying off. It is paying off through the massive investment that we are now seeing taking place in Plymouth.”
He added: “This isn’t about promises of big projects that we should look forward to in years to come. It’s not about artists’ impressions of schemes that may or may not happen. It’s about spades already in the ground, cranes in the sky, ribbons being cut, keys being handed over, removal vans outside new homes, jobs being advertised in expanding companies and it’s about families enjoying a wealth of new places to go to in their leisure time.”
Councillor Evans said this investment generated income that helped reduce the impact of reductions in the Government’s revenue support grant which had made setting a balanced revenue budget more difficult each year.
He said “All this investment is very much about clean streets, repairing potholes, cracking down on the minority that cause litter on our streets, safety, tackling vandalism, graffiti and dog mess.
“It’s about making Plymouth a better place to live. A cleaner, greener and safer city. A city great green spaces, play areas, events and a great culture. It’s about Plymouth being on the up.”
Councillor Evans described the budget as the greenest the Council had ever agreed.
He said: “We are serious about taking on the ambitious challenge of becoming a net carbon neutral city by 2030, so this is the greenest budget this Council has ever seen, with more than £20 million worth of projects that support this ambition.
“We have a long way to go but we are very serious about this. We’re serious about it because it matters that we tackle climate change head on but it also matters because we saves money as reducing energy use reduces energy bills.”
COUNCIL TAX BILLS
These are 2020/21 Council Tax levels in Plymouth, including the police and fire authority precepts.
| Valuation band | Plymouth City Council |
Devon & Cornwall Police Authority |
Devon & Cornwall Police Authority |
Total Charge Due |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | £1049.85 | £147.76 | £58.83 | £1256.44 |
| B | £1224.82 | £172.39 | £68.63 | £1465.84 |
| C | £1399.80 | £197.01 | £78.44 | £1675.25 |
| D | £1574.77 | £221.64 | £88.24 | £1884.65 |
| E | £1924.72 | £270.89 | £107.85 | £2303.46 |
| F | £2274.67 | £320.15 | £127.46 | £2722.28 |
| G | £2624.62 | £369.40 | £147.07 | £3141.09 |
| H | £3149.54 | £443.28 | £176.48 | £3769.30 |