Council budget for 2013/14

Brighton & Hove City Council has approved the 2013/14 budget. Councillors discussed and voted on the budget at a full council meeting which took place on the evening of 28 February.

General fund revenue budget and council tax were passed - this means an increase of 1.96% in the council’s element of the council tax has been agreed. Find out how this will affect your Council Tax bill.

To catch up on the meeting you can watch the archived budget council webcast or search for #BHbudget on twitter.

Budget headlines

Through the council’s capital investment programme

• £10 million will be spent on primary schools
• £27 million in housing stock
• £6.9 million in transport schemes and highways maintenance

The revenue budget reflects savings of over £17 million in the year ahead, needed as a result of government reductions in funding to the council, and increased demand for some services.

It is predicted that £20-25 million savings will need to be found every year for the next five years. The agreed budget includes over £10.8 million in savings from the council's Value for Money programme.

The budget also includes: 

• Minimising the impact of the government’s 10% cut to Council Tax benefits funding by finding £1.7 million to reduce the impact on working age households of having to contribute towards their Council Tax
• Reducing the Council Tax discount for second homes and incentivise bringing empty properties back into use.
• Setting aside over £7 million of council money for refunds of business rates originally collected by the government.

Amendments to the final budget proposals

The final budget proposals were voted through by councillors with a series of amendments from both the Conservative Group and the Labour & Co-operative Group.

The Labour & Co-operative Group amendments commit the council to the following changes to the proposed budget:

• £150,000 extra will be spent in the temporary accommodation budget
• £19,000 extra will be spent on the homelessness budget
• £70,000 to fund a full-time Welfare Rights Officer for two years - they will help cover additional workload created by national welfare changes
• £5,000 for Welfare Changes to aid with communications to council tenants
• £15,000 for Children Centre Nurseries to ensure that there will be no additional charges for children under 3 years old.

The Conservative Group amendment commits the council to

• spend an additional £50,000 on the Music Service.

Find out more

You can view the budget meeting agenda and

• Read the key points from the budget
• Download the agreed amendments to the budget proposals (PDF 123kb).
• Have a look at our budget FAQs
• See the full report for the Policy & Resources Committee meeting (PDF 2MB)
• View the equality impact assessments for the final budget proposals

Before making their decisions on the budget, councillors heard your views on spending and how you believe the council could make the best use of resources. There are many ways that residents have had their say, find out more below.

Twitter
Join the debate on twitter by using #BHBudget.

Web tool
Find out how you rated your highest, and lowest, priorities for the city on our budget web tool.

Leader's live chat - Open Door
Recently the leader of the council took your questions for two webcasts about the budget. You can get recordings of the webcasts and find out more on our Open Door page.

Survey
Our budget survey was available to residents from 26 November to 16 January. The results of this survey are included in the full report from the Policy & Resources Committee meeting on 14 February (PDF 2MB) (Appendix 13 starting on page 159).

Public event
The council held a free event at Jubilee Library to enable residents to have their say about how the council should plan for the future. Find out more about what happened on our budget public event page.

Get more information
You can find out more about the cost of our services, get information on the 2012/13 council budget or view the timetable for setting the budget for 2013/14.