Bath and North East Somerset Council’s Cabinet has unveiled detailed plans to invest in what it says is a balanced budget that will continue to protect essential frontline services.

The Cabinet says that in order to achieve this and deliver council services fit for the future, it will be focusing on six key priorities that they have identified as mattering the most to local people.

Improving local transport

• Funding to support the implementation of Transport Strategies for Bath, Keynsham, Chew and Somer Valleys in order to tackle congestion and improve local transport;

• Investing an additional £500k in highway maintenance, over and above the £3.6 million granted by Government, in order to better maintain the condition of our local roads;

• Continued support of local buses, including additional investment through the Better Bus Fund.

Delivering new homes and jobs over coming years

• Investing more than £3.2 million in new affordable housing schemes throughout the area, including support for extra-care housing and a shared-housing initiative for young people, as well as affordable housing schemes in rural and urban areas;

• Improving connectivity through continued support for rural broadband and investing in the Digital B&NES project to enable the provision of ultra and superfast broadband to local businesses;

• Supporting local traders through investment in improved Wayfinding;

• Up to a £30 million investment to support Bath Quays delivery, enabling the creation of thousands of local jobs and income from commercial property.

Investing in our young people

• Protection for frontline children and youth services including children’s centres, child protection services and schools.

• Improving and expanding facilities at Riverside Youth Hub.

• Investing over £6 million in new and improved school buildings in order to modernise facilities for local school children and support parental choice;

• Upgrading and modernising children’s play areas throughout the district.

Supporting cleaner, greener and healthier communities

• Protecting front line environmental services including street cleansing, with no further public toilet closures;

• Providing £60k to tackle the urban gull problem and enable the delivery of the new Gull Strategy;

• Investing in new leisure facilities in Bath and Keynsham to support an increase in participation in physical activities.

Promoting greater choice and independence for older people

• Protecting frontline adult health and social care services with additional funding enabled through the new Social Care precept.

• Investing over £1 million in Disabled Facilities Grants to enable home adaptations that support greater independence for elderly and vulnerable residents.

Tackling waste and increasing efficiency

• Saving over £5 million through internal organizational savings and financial efficiencies.

• Exploring more opportunities to share services and collaborate with other organisations, including health, other public services and local authorities.

• Generating over £3 million of new income for 2016/17 by innovative means, such as more weddings and events in a variety of local places; growing income from the Council’s commercial property estate; growing the visitor economy, with more markets, pop-ups and events; developing the CCTV service to operate on a more commercial footing and increasing income from the Heritage estate and assets.

The detailed budget proposals for 2016/17 were published in advance of the Cabinet meeting which meets this week to finalise the proposals, prior to the meeting on 16th February, where the full Council will discuss proposals and if agreed, will set the new budget.

In response to the plans being made public, Councillor Andrew Furse (Kingsmead), Lib-Dem spokesperson on finance, commented: “After five years of frozen Council Tax, this first Conservative budget will hit residents with a 3.25% increase in Council Tax accompanied by cuts to services across a wide range of Council departments.

“The continuation of the Liberal Democrat administration’s strategy of investing in property is welcome, as this helps to boost Council incomes and reduce reliance on government funding. However, it seems that the Conservative plans place a lot of faith in untested and risky initiatives to balance their budgets.

“We also have serious concerns about some of the specific savings proposals included in the draft budget. In particular, the Cabinet expects to make large savings in preventative health budgets, such as addiction and sexual health services, which would seem likely to increase costs in the long run.

“We will be scrutinising the Conservative Cabinet’s proposals closely this month.”