Last night, Welwyn Hatfield Borough Councillors voted to approve a Conservative budget which protects the most important services and keeps an unavoidable council tax rise well below inflation.
Unsurprisingly, opposition parties continued to bemoan the council's proposals without providing any hint of what they would do instead.
By law, councils must devise and adopt an annual budget which sets out the council's plan for spending on the various services it provides. This includes setting the borough’s council tax contribution for the coming financial year.
This year, Conservative councillors proposed a budget which, among other things, protects all statutory services - including black and blue bin collections - whilst maintaining other non-statutory services such as the waste food collections. Meanwhile, they proposed raising council tax by an average of only 2.97%; a figure well below the 11% rate of inflation.
Executive Member for Resources Councillor Stephen Boulton spoke at length at the meeting outlining the many pressures caused by a large range of external issues, including the war in Ukraine which have precipitated the cost of living crisis. Tough decisions, including price rises for non-statutory services such as brown bin collections and some parking and parking permit charges, therefore had to be made.
However, the budget also includes positive measures, such as a £150m provision to a maintenance programme to improve to the council's housing stock, and a £4.3m fund aimed at making nearly 200 homes across the Borough less susceptible to damp and mould. The Conservative-run council has a long record of low council tax - including a seven year period in which council tax was not increased at all.
Labour councillors opposed the proposed budget, but provided no detail as to how they would present a different Budget with the cost pressures which the council faces. Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat councillors declined to engage the budget debate at all. Lib Dem leader Paul Zukowskyj said he would rather his party "keep its powder dry" in terms of how it would do things differently were it in charge of the yearly budget. However, it is very difficult to keep ones powder dry in the storms which the council faces.
Summing up the room's disquiet that neither opposition party had anything constructive to contribute, instead favouring grandiose political speeches aimed at manipulating the proceedings for their own political gain, Conservative councillor Paul Smith said:
"Unlike some, I've not prepared a big political speech for tonight. However, I was one of the members on the Task and Finish Panel for the Budget Group. Not one single suggestion, not one single idea, was aired by either the Labour or Liberal Democrat groups in those cross-party meetings.
"I learned tonight that the Lib Dem group has ideas, but they want to keep their powder dry. We look forward to maybe one day hearing what these secret plans are. But I became a councillor to help residents, not come out at annual Budget meetings with big political speeches, while contributing nothing to the process, and doing nothing to actually help our community."
