Council tax rise and £16m budget cuts approved

Gateshead Council have approved close to £16m of cuts

Nearly £16m worth of cuts and a 4.99% increase in council tax has been approved by Gateshead Council.

The local authority will also make use of £6.8m of its reserves to help balance its budget.

Despite the use of reserves, the council has warned that they will need to make £49.5m worth of cuts over the next five years.

The council's Labour leader, Martin Gannon, said he realised the decision to raise council tax from April would not be popular, but it was one the council "must make" in order to keep providing services.

Budget cuts

Some of the moves agreed by the council for the 2024/2025 financial year include reducing its recycling budget and cutting its current adult social care budget by close to £5m.

Mr Gannon said that council tax rises were unpopular but required.

He also said that council tax rises could not make up Gateshead Council’s budget shortfall, as close to 90% of its properties were in lower council tax bands.

Therefore, he said, any rise in fees would not lead to as big an income increase as other regions of the country.

“We will continue to lobby government to try to ensure local services can be funded in a sustainable and fair way going forward,” he said.

The Liberal Democrat opposition leader, councillor Ron Beadle, voted against the budget.

He said: “This Labour council has excuses where it should have ambition, strategies where it should have solutions, plans where it should have performance. And how did we get to this point?"

Additional reporting by the Local Democracy Reporting Service.