Coventry City Council outlines 'tough choices' over budget shortfall

Council leader George Duggins (left) and Richard Brown said tough choices needed to be made

Residents in Coventry could soon have to pay for the collection of garden waste as a way of helping tackle a funding shortfall, the council has said.

Coventry's Godiva Festival is likely to be changed so it covers its costs.

Street lights and parking charges could also be affected, Richard Brown, cabinet member for finance, said.

The local authority is forecasting a £30m budget shortfall for the next financial year.

A report setting out the proposals will go to the council's cabinet on 12 December, with a final decision being made in February.

Mr Brown said the situation represented a "financial crisis brought on by years of underfunding".

The council is proposing changes to street lighting, parking and garden waste collection

However, council investments have come under the spotlight in recent months.

It emerged that a £10.5m investment in company Cannon Kirk, originally designed to reignite the Friargate development project, was now only worth £2.8m.

The BBC revealed in October that the value of the council's investments in two other businesses - Coombe Abbey Hotel and Tom White Waste - had also taken substantial hits.

Earlier this year, the local authority lost a £1m loan made to the Coventry City of Culture Trust, when it collapsed.

Meanwhile, just over a week ago the BBC reported that the city council intended to fire and rehire bin workers to head off equal pay claims.

'Unprecedented rising demand'

Coventry is, however, just one of many councils facing extreme financial pressures, with Nottingham the latest to issue a section 114 notice, declaring itself effectively bankrupt.

Labour councillor Mr Brown said historical underfunding was being exacerbated by "unprecedented rising demand and inflationary pressures".

"We deliver more than 600 services and in order to balance the books, we need to make some very difficult choices, particularly if we want to protect vital services like support for our elderly and young people," he said.

He claimed the council had received £100m less each year since 2010 and also some of the lowest funding per head of population in the country.

A rising demand for social care had added to the council's financial burden, Mr Brown said.

"We're now seeing people not being able to pay their mortgages, losing their homes, can't afford their rents and so we're seeing more and more demand in terms of homelessness.

"We're facing all those national issues that everybody else is facing, but we're doing it with less money."

However, the government said local authorities together had seen an increase in their core spending power since the last financial year of up to £5.1bn.

For Coventry it represented a rise of up to £30.5m "making available a total of up to £335.3m in 2023-24, with an additional £13.9m in social care grants", the Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities said.

"Councils are ultimately responsible for their own finances, but we stand ready to speak to any council that has concerns about its ability to manage its finances or faces pressures it has not planned for," it added.

The council has forecast a £30m shortfall for the next financial year