Following on from its draft budget unveiling, The Welsh Government has confirmed that Caerphilly County Borough Council will see its funding cut by 0.9% for 2016/17.
The local authority will get £263.293 million compared to the £265.723m it got this year.
Nationally, the 22 local authorities in Wales will receive more than £4 billion, excluding money for fire and rescue services.
Announcing the provisional Revenue Support Grant, Public Services Minister, Leighton Andrews said: “I propose to set local government revenue funding at £4.099 billion, a decrease of 1.4% or £57 million compared to 2015/16.
“This is a considerably better settlement than local government was expecting and is good news for local services in Wales.
“We have protected the funding for local government in Wales over the course of this Assembly term. As a consequence of UK Government decisions since 2010/11, spending on local services in England has decreased by around 10% in cash terms, while in Wales it has increased by 2.5%.
“In setting council tax levels for 2016/17, I urge local authorities to think seriously about the funding challenges they face and to balance this with a consideration of the financial burden on households.”
Caerphilly County Borough Council has already announced its draft budget proposals and it looks set to increase council tax by 3.9% for next year as well as cuts totalling £12.4m.
• The Plaid Cymru group on Caerphilly County Borough Council has said it will oppose the planned 3.9% council tax hike when it goes to a vote.
Councillor Colin Mann, leader of the 20-strong Plaid Cymru group, said: “The Labour Party is addicted to hiking people’s council tax. Residents will be paying more for services but getting less for their money if this goes through.
“We don’t believe there is need to increase council tax at the level proposed. We hope that the Labour group think again – but I guess they will push it through whatever people think as they always do.”
The Labour group has a clear majority of 50 councillors on Caerphilly Council, so Plaid Cymru’s vote is unlikely to derail the budget proposals.
Labour will once again hammer Caerphilly residents with an inflation busting council tax rise, and in the next breath they will bleat on about poverty in Caerphilly.
Its not just Labour, Half the Cllr’s in the Caerphilly Borough are not worth a dime they get paid and the guys at the Top on over £100 000 pa are totally out of touch with this world…
How many middle management are on over £50k but rather than get rid of expensive dead wood and make redundancies like any private company would be forced to do to balance the books they simply hike up council tax. Council tax increases should be capped, heaven help us if the Welsh Assembly ever get their sticky mitts on our income tax – it won’t be worth working in Wales when that happens.