Swindon council tax rise approved to help balance budget

A council tax rise has been approved by an authority that has to save £45m to help balance its budget.

Swindon Borough Council needs to make savings due to inflation, staff pay rises and more demand for social care.

At a meeting on Thursday, councillors approved a budget that includes a 4.99% council tax rise - nearly £77 a year more for a Band D property.

Other planned savings include not monitoring sometimes the 1,000 CCTV cameras the council runs.

Some street lights will also either be dimmed or switched off to help make savings.

Opposition leader Jim Robbins (Lab) said the government was to blame for taking a "massive amount" of money away from local authorities in recent years.

"About £15bn has been taken away, and obviously we've had well over £100m taken out of our share in Swindon, and it's increasingly difficult to run public services to the quality that members of the public expect."

Keith Williams, responsible for finance at the Conservative-run council, said the current year was "probably the most challenging" the council had faced in terms of its finances.

He said 12% of the council's cost pressures had come from inflation, especially gas and electricity costs.

"So a number of our savings are specifically targeted in those areas," he added.

"We have obviously rolled out the LED street lights. They are quite bright compared to what we had before, the nature of the light is different.

"So there is plenty of scope there with LED Lighting, where you can actually make a significant reduction in the amount of electricity you're using and not have quite so much difference in the actual level of illumination."

Wiltshire's Police and Crime Commissioner, Philip Wilkinson said CCTV could still play a role in prosecutions and act as a deterrent even if the borough council's camera feeds were not constantly monitored.

Mr Wilkinson, (Cons) said: "This facility [CCTV] will still be available for Wiltshire Police officers to identify suspects and review the evidence so our commitment to using the technology available to us remains consistent and CCTV, albeit without live coverage, continues to act as a deterrent in Swindon town centre"

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