CORNWALL Council has recommended a draft budget to protect front line services and provide more money for adult social care, improving transport and creating and building new affordable homes — but it would mean a large hike in council tax.

The council’s cabinet is recommending a draft budget which will help protect front line services from the impact of further government cuts, provide an additional £27-million for adult social care services and invest more than £850-million in schemes to improve road, rail and bus services, create jobs and build new affordable homes for local people over the next four years.

Introducing the draft budget and business plan at yesterday’s meeting of the cabinet (Thursday January 28), Adam Paynter, the cabinet member for resources, said the council was continuing to face significant financial pressures as a result of cuts in government funding. The aim of the proposed budget was to help deliver the priorities identified in the council’s strategy to meet the needs of the most vulnerable and protect essential services such as public transport and road repairs and maintenance.

Last year the council set a four year budget and business plan, which included a 1.97% increase in council tax for 2016/17. This increase would have meant a 49p a week increase (£25 a year) for a Band D property. Since then the Government has suggested councils raise council tax by a further 2% to help fund the pressures facing adult social care services.

The council said that introducing this ’Social Care Precept’ in Cornwall would increase overall spending on adult social care services from the current level of £116-million a year to £143-million by 2019/20 (a 23% increase). The 2% council tax increase, which would mean an additional 50p per week increase for a Band D property, would provide an extra £4.7-million for adult social care in 2016/17.

Other key proposals include a £1-million one-off investment to help support the transformation of One Stop Shops and libraries and £855-million capital investment in schemes to improve transport links, including the A30 at Temple, build new homes and help grow the local economy.

Following the Government’s decision to redistribute funding from rural to urban areas, announced as part of the Local Government Funding Settlement at the end of December, the council saw an additional £6-million cut in its grant for 2016/17. As a result, the authority needs to make savings of £40-million next year, with total savings of £103-million required to be achieved over the next four years.

Explaining that the cabinet was recommending the use of reserves as part of this year’s budget, Adam Paynter said that taking £12-million from the council’s general reserves would help cushion the impact of the additional cuts and protect front line services from further reductions.

He said: ’The Government’s decision to take money away from rural areas to give to urban areas means we need to find a greater level of savings in the first two years of our budget. We already had a planned programme of efficiencies, commercialisation, cuts and service transformation to achieve the savings we need to keep spending within the funding available to us, but this decision means we need to find more savings in the short term.

’We are proposing to use reserves to smooth the budget and prevent the need to make further cuts in essential services. We are also recommending that we use the new powers granted by the Government to raise council tax by two percent to provide much needed money for our adult social care services to support vulnerable people in Cornwall.’

The recommendations from the cabinet will be considered by the full council on February 16.