Leader's blog - Thursday 20 February

Highlights: 

• Gateshead Council has agreed a budget and capital investment programme which includes a rolling programme of investment of £620m over the next five years.
• New homes, jobs, green spaces and further investment in the local environment are at the heart of budget proposals agreed by full Council.
• Pothole repair, an area of concern raised by residents has been prioritised to ensure potholes can be repaired quicker and more efficiently going forward. You can report any issues with potholes online
• Find out more about our budget for 2025/26 (link to Council papers for meeting on 20 February)
• Find out more about our Capital Investment programme 
• Learn more about how we spend our money and where our money comes from

Transcript

Thank you for taking the time to listen to this message. 

I'm recording this just prior to Gateshead Council agreeing it's budget for next year, okay. 

And you know it's a challenging year again. Yes, things are better because the government has given us a slightly better settlement than we've had over previous years, but we still have a £35 million gap in our medium term financial strategy that's over the next five years. So yes, it's a settlement this year which has benefited us, but we need that to be maintained in years going forward. 

Next year we'll have 8% more than we have this year. Having said that, the government when they gave us that settlement did it on the basis of an assumption that we would raise Council Tax by the maximum that we're allowed to. That's 2.99% general increase in Council Tax and there's also a 2% precept for those authorities who provide adult social care, Gateshead  provides adult social care. 

The costs of adult social care are constantly climbing as the number of elderly people increase, as people live longer, as their care needs become more expensive and more complex. So the Council Tax will rise next year by 4.99%. That is assumed by government in the settlement figure and it does give us the resources from central government. That issue is significant. 

Always year on year, there's a heavier burden falling on local residents when what we need to see is a shift towards central government taking a greater burden, or a greater share of the burden, in terms of providing adult social care. And that is something which we will continue to make representations to the government about and we'll continue to campaign about. 

In terms of the budget going forward, obviously there's been a public consultation. 

We have listened very carefully in challenging financial circumstances to try and prioritise our resources to meet people's expectations, okay, and their demands. 

People tell us quite rightly that the quality of the environment in which we live is something which is hugely important. Not everybody requires adult social care from the council, not everybody has young children who requires services from children's services. But every one of us lives in Gateshead and we've witnessed over the last 10-15 years the deterioration in the quality of our local environment. 

Reductions in funding for street cleansing, for ground maintenance, for our public parks have all had an impact on the quality of our lives. As I say, challenging financial circumstances this year that we're in, we managed to secure and prioritise an additional £2 million towards improving environmental services.  And thankfully next year going forward we'll be able to do that again. So that'll be an additional £2million to improve the environment. That'll give us the ability to employ more staff to deal with issues around graffiti, around some of the condition of our streets and back lanes, to improve the quality of ground maintenance. 

And we will continue to do that going forward and we will continue to try to secure greater resources to make those things happen in the future. 

Another thing that people have spoken to us quite strongly about is the issue around the conditions of potholes in the roads. And as a consequence of and we've received direct funding from central government to improve the quality of pothole repair.  And as a consequence, I think that an additional £7.7 million has gone at the capital budget to facilitate that. So we will see a massive increase. I think it's six times more repairs to potholes in the 12 months going forward. 

So we consulted, we listened and we're trying to secure the resources to improve services to the areas where people are most concerned. 

Thank you very much for your continued support. Please engage with the Council when we carry out public consultations. We want to hear your priorities and we look forward to serving you over the next 12 months. 

Thank you.