COUNCIL tax is set to be frozen for thousands of Bolton residents next year, town hall leaders have announced.

But they also agreed plans to slash £43 million from the Bolton Council budget between 2015 and 2017, resulting in the loss of 500 jobs and cuts in departments.

Bolton Council will have to pay an extra £700,000 on top of the government grant, worth £1.1 million, to balance the books and freeze council tax, but the authority leader Cllr Cliff Morris said he and the Labour group recognised Bolton residents faced a ‘cost of living crisis’.

He told the cabinet on Monday: “The government have promised to put the money in our base budget – it is a promise we hold them too, though there have been other promises they have not kept.

“We believe that the people of Bolton have enough to contend with.

“If I thought we weren’t getting it in our base budget it would be a different consideration.”

The freeze in council tax has been made possible because of a government offer to local authorities across the country if they don’t hike bills.

The council has formulated its budget for the next two years on the basis of a two per cent rise in the charge, the legal limit set by the government before they would have to call a referendum on the issue.

By doing that they would raise £1.8 million for the council coffers, and the government grant pays £1.1 million of that — equivalent to a one per cent rise for residents.

The Labour group have said they will pay the shortfall of £700,000 using one-off revenue and predicted under spending from previous years, worth £4 million, that they have sourced within the council.


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Of the rest of the £4 million, £2 million will be go towards supporting The Octagon Theatre’s plans for redevelopment, revealed in The Bolton News in January, and £1.3 million will be spent on street cleaning and tackling fly-tipping.

In November Bolton Council agreed that it would maximise the amount of capital funding – reserved for capital assets such as buildings, roads and housing – by looking at more options of borrowing, in addition to monies made available from previous cuts.

Through this, £13 million has been found over the next two years, of which the council wants to spend:

  • £5 million on residential roads and pavements
  • £4 million to improve Horwich Leisure Centre
  • £1 million on leisure facilities for young people
  • £1 million to help elderly and disabled people adapt their homes, so they can live independently for longer

But while one-off funding has been made, Bolton Council still has to find £43 million in savings in its revenue budget, covering the day-to-day running of the authority, between 2015-17.

Bolton Council produced a draft proposal for savings last year, based on predictions, and it was confirmed to cabinet on Monday that it will have to cut £43 million.

Up to 500 jobs will be lost at the authority as a result, although cabinet members heard nearly 800 applications have been received for voluntary redundancy — around 20 per cent of the council workforce.

Schemes to make the savings include centralising administration roles into the council with a single team, depending more on community groups and volunteers to carry out environmental and youth services and closing four of the authority’s town centre buildings.

Town hall leaders are in discussion with Wigan Council over sharing parts of their environmental services departments, while the council is also looking to create a new company within the authority to oversee adult social care.

Cllr Ebrahim Adia, the councillor in charge of regeneration and resources, criticised the government for demanding the scale of cuts from local government.

He said at cabinet: “I would like to remind people of the context we are in —this council has already faced budget cuts of £100 million pounds over the last four years.

“We are now being asked to find £43 million over the next two years. When you think of that, that is a significant challenge for us.

“We are extremely disappointed about central government and the savings they expect local government to find, which are a disproportionate amount of cuts. It does not seem to value the difference that local authorities make.

“It has been an extremely difficult budget to set, and we have had to make some difficult choices while trying to minimise the impact on our most vulnerable residents.”

The final budget will be voted on by councillors at the next full council, which will be held on Wednesday, February 25.

The cuts attracted protests from unions, who carried a coffin into Bolton Town Hall to symbolise the "death of public services".