Sheffield council tax bills set to rise by 4.99 per cent or £1.12 a week

People living in Band D homes will pay £1,840.69 for city council services in 2023/4, broken down as a 2.99% city council increase and a 2% social care precept. The rise equals around £1.12 a week for most homes.

A meeting of the council strategy and resources committee, which is made up of all the policy committee chairs, took just 12 minutes and seven seconds to sign off on months of work behind the scenes identifying £48 million service cuts and savings to cope with predicted £69 million pressures on committee budgets. Out of this, £43m relates to social care.

The report says: “Examples of the savings include accommodation reviews and rationalisation of council buildings, service redesigns, reduced post-pandemic subsidies to leisure providers and person-centred reviews of care packages, to name a few.”

Last year the council had to use £14.5m of reserves but there is no call on reserves planned for this year’s budget as the money allocated from central government was higher than expected.

The budget report to the council refers to more than a decade of central government funding cuts: “The fact remains that Sheffield has almost 30% or £856 per household less to spend in real terms, when compared to 2010/11. This reduction is well above the national average of approximately 20% or £581 per dwelling.”

It states: “Most homes will see an increase of £1.12 per week. However, Sheffield is committed to supporting its most vulnerable families. To do this, £200,000 has been added to the Council Tax Hardship fund, bringing the total to £2.2m for 2023/24.”

More savings

Other support packages are in place. The report says that the alternative to the rise would be to find £5m more savings, with too great an impact on vital services.

The budget proposals will be put to a full council meeting for approval next Wednesday, March 1.

Councillors praised the spirit of inter-party cooperation that has taken place in order to identify savings in committee budgets.

Finance sub-committee co-chair Bryan Lodge praised the work that has taken place, adding: “We’ve shown that in spite of the difficulties we’ve gone through in delivering a balanced budget, we are still trying to deliver the best that we can and all of us 84 councillors are trying to do the best that we can for the city.”

Consensus call

Green Coun Angela Argenzio, who co-chairs the adult health and social care policy committee, said: “My experience as a co-chair in working with my co-chair, who’s Labour, and deputy and the rest of the group – it’s been amazing how we’ve really come together with the officers, the time and the effort and the hours that’s gone in.”

She said it was the first time that members had cooperated rather than arguing with each other.

She urged that process to continue, with members finding a way of coming together to find a consensus on issues.

Committee chair and council leader Coun Terry Fox thanked council staff and members for a huge amount of hard work and noted that he expects political groups will put in amendments to the proposals at the full council meeting.

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