Bristol City Council to increase parking charges and cut jobs

Bristol City Council needs to find £33m worth of savings over five years

Parking charges in a city are set to rise and jobs at a council axed in order to balance its budget.

Bristol City Council must cut a £19.5m deficit for 2022-23.

Council tax will rise by three per cent from April, including one per cent for adult social care - the maximum hike the authority can make.

Mayor Marvin Rees said the budget included £250m for new homes and hailed it as "a budget for house-building".

Managerial jobs at the council will be cut and offices and buildings sold off, some of which Mr Rees admitted the organisation had "lost track of" over the years.

Council tenants' rent will go up by the cost of inflation plus one per cent but there will be no cuts to frontline services, including libraries and children's centres.

The details were announced by Mr Rees and his deputy Craig Cheney on Monday, ahead of a cabinet meeting next Tuesday.

Mr Rees said the council "must be able to do more with less"

He said: "There is a £250m commitment to build homes through [the council's housing company] Goram and others over three years.

"There are 2,069 additional council homes over seven years and £80million into new energy performance for homes."

Free parking cuts

The council said higher parking fees would raise an extra £2.3m, along with £1m from bus shelter advertising.

In some parts of the city, drivers without a permit can stay for half an hour for free in a Resident's Parking Zone (RPZ).

This would be axed to generate £500,000 in savings.

Several areas of Bristol are covered by resident's parking zones

Mr Rees said the financial relationship between local authorities and central government was "broken" after 12 years of austerity coupled with the pandemic.

Councillor Cheney said Covid-related losses in council tax collection, business rates and increased energy costs "hit us hard".

He said the council owned approximately 36 office building, some of which were only at 20 per cent capacity with people working from home.

The authority needed to "to ensure we have people near where they need to be but not a building with only three people with the lights and heat on", he added.

He said cuts in middle and upper management would recoup £5.5m through voluntary redundancies and leaving vacant positions unfilled.

'Brutal reality'

Mr Rees said the maximum permitted council tax hike of 1.99 per cent plus a one per cent social care precept was necessary because the "brutal reality" was that a lower increase would leave the council unlikely to receive further funding from government.

Asked whether the budget would receive support from other parties, the mayor said: "Behind closed doors there is a recognition of the scale of challenge that is faced and the reasonableness of the process we have gone through to get from £43m to £19m."

The budget requires cross-party support as Labour lost its majority in the chamber at last May's local elections.