Consultation on our budget for the coming year has started today and you can have your say on our spending priorities. Cabinet yesterday agreed the budget proposals and gave the green light for consultation. The feedback and results will be considered before the final proposals are discussed by Cabinet, so please take the opportunity to give your views here. The budget settlement from the Welsh Government gives us a cash increase and real terms increases for all our directorates, including schools. I’m delighted that we appear to have avoided any major cuts and we’re protecting services and jobs as best we can.
Pay rises are likely to be very limited given the UK Government’s stance on this issue, although it’s ultimately a matter for Welsh Government to decide teachers’ pay and for the employers to have a nationally-agreed council pay offer. This will feel like a kick in the teeth for many of our staff, particularly those who’ve been on the front line in providing care to the vulnerable during the pandemic, and I hope this will be recognised in negotiations.
Council tax has yet to be decided, but we need to balance supporting families with the need to keep services running, protect jobs, continue to support those facilities and services suspended during lockdown and to pay benefits for those hardest hit during the pandemic. Unfortunately, the outlook for future years isn’t as good as we know both UK and Welsh Governments have had to dig deep in response to the pandemic and to give the public sector a reasonable settlement. They won’t have the money in the medium term to do this so we expect tough years ahead, although our Recovery Programme is designed to help us meet new challenges as we slowly emerge from the pandemic. Thank you to Ben Smith, Sarah Willis and the finance team and everyone across the council who’ve played their part in putting together this year’s budget proposals.
It’s great to see our vaccination programme is rolling-out and reaching more vulnerable people. We’ve now vaccinated more than 25,000 of the most vulnerable people in the Swansea bay area. This week we opened the third mass vaccination centre (MVC) at the Canolfan Centre. The programme is being run by the health board and is supported by us. So far those aged over 80 have been prioritised and over 70s are now being invited to the MVCs. We hope to have these two groups vaccinated by the end of February. We’ve also been prioritising our care homes and these should be completed by the end of the month. A big thank you to our staff in these homes for all their dedication during these hugely challenging times. And our frontline social care staff, along with NHS staff, have also been prioritised for vaccination. The roll-out will continue in the coming months and each of us will be contacted to let us know when we’re due to receive the vaccination. For further details on the nationally-agreed programme go here. Well done to Craig Gimblett, Ben Cromie and Sue Reed and her team for helping to identify and prepare the MVCs.
Once again thank you to our highways team for their efforts in keeping people safe and the floods at bay during Storm Christoph. They were out in atrocious weather overnight on Wednesday dealing with callouts, closing roads and issuing sandbags where necessary. A lot of prevention work checking and clearing watercourses had taken place prior to the storm’s arrival and that helped keep the problems to a minimum. And thank you to Adam Ratajczak from our security team who stepped in to support our registrations team by translating for a Polish man whose wife had passed away. These are just a few examples of how our staff go above and beyond every day.
Thank you all for your continued efforts in these challenging times. Please stay safe!
I expect no rise in Council Tax for this year and for 4 executive years to come as there was no rise for landlords for 2300 HMO properties in the city and Uplands ward.
If the Cabinet decides to increase Council Tax then please can we have your exact analysis why ordinary residents have an increase and landlords have not.
Thank you.
Thanks Gerti,
Council tax must be levied within the confines of the Wales wide council tax regulations and specific rules apply to HMOs and students for which the Council cannot simply act in isolation. On matters where we do have discretion, for example empty and second homes, we have acted to share the burden. Wider decisions on council tax for those that do have to pay it are a matter for Council and have to weigh cost pressures, including the cost of Council Tax Reduction Scheme for those on low incomes which has to be met by other tax payers, service provision, the covid response, recovery and overall grant funding form Welsh Government. The Welsh Government assumes council tax at standard spending increases of just over 5%. This Council is currently considering options through Cabinet and Council, all of which will be a lower Band D increase than this planning assumption of Welsh Government. As councils individually consider their council tax rates it should come as no surprise that most will see significant rises in tax rates as a result of national funding decisions and the realities of the economic and social cost of the pandemic.
I work for the Client Transport Unit and am wondering where we stand on the vaccination priority list. Our team was asked in November whether they would be willing to have a vaccination as I believe at that time we may have been considered an ‘at risk’ group; we transport clients to and from schools and day centres and also have contracts with the Welsh Ambulance Service to transport patients in and out of hospital. Our staff team are working on the frontline, to fulfil our role we simply do not have the option of working from home. Since the idea of vaccination was first floated in November we have had no further news, yet we read that frontline social services staff, staff in care homes and of course NHS are either in priority groups or have had their first vaccination. During the pandemic we have transported service-users to and from care homes and continue to do so when requested, regularly take service-users to services run by frontline social care staff and take patients to and from hospital appointments exposing ourselves to the same risks as staff in these service areas are exposed too, yet, as transport staff, we don’t seem to feature on any high risk staff groups or vaccination priority groups. have you any idea when my colleagues will be offered a vaccination?
Thanks Robert,
We recognise the desire of all staff to receive vaccination and we’re continuing to work with Swansea Bay University Health Board to increase capacity as vaccination supplies increase. However, all Health Boards deliver the vaccination programme under strict nationally-set criteria based on risk and vulnerability as set out in the Welsh Government’s vaccination strategy and JVCI clinical prioritisation lists. Even so, please be assured that we will continue to raise the issue of wider staff immunisation with Welsh Government.