Caerphilly County Borough Council leader David Poole has penned his latest Your Council Leader Writes column. He says:

READERS will be aware that the council’s final budget for the forthcoming year was approved at a meeting of council last week.

The final budget report included a savings requirement of almost £14 million (£13.921 million) for 2019/20 – with an estimated further savings requirement of an additional £44 million up to 2023/24.

You’ll be aware that draft budget proposals totalling £14.6 million were reluctantly put out to public consultation in November last year.

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It’s fair to say that my cabinet colleagues and I were uncomfortable at the level of cuts that we were required to make, and it was a very difficult decision for us to put these forward for public consultation.

Fortunately, we received a slightly better than anticipated final settlement from Welsh Government, which allowed us to reconsider a number of key savings proposals – including Community Safety Wardens, the Meals on Wheels service, the closure of two household recycling centres, rat treatment charges, community centre cuts and funding for community schemes such as Bargoed Ice Rink and Senghenydd Splash Pad.

These were the things our residents told us would be unpalatable - we’ve listened and responded, and for the time being at least, have been able to take these off the table.

As part of the budget setting, a 6.95 per cent council tax increase for 2019/2020 was also reluctantly agreed.

This increase is certainly higher than in previous years, and is something that none of us wanted to see implemented.

Importantly though, as was demonstrated from the responses to our public consultation, our residents understand the need for the rise and are willing to pay a little more in order to protect the frontline services they value so much.

This 6.95 per cent rise equates to a £1.41 a week increase in council tax payments based on a band D property.

While it’s higher than we’d like, for 2018/19, Caerphilly had the third lowest Band D equivalent council tax payment in the whole of Wales. Even with this increase, Caerphilly residents will still pay among the lowest council tax in Wales.

It’s also important to note that there are more than 12,000 households (more than15 per cent of households) across our county borough which pay no council tax at all through the Council Tax Reduction Scheme, with a further 5,100 receiving partial assistance. There is support there to protect our most vulnerable.

Looking forward, we’re far from being out of the woods and have many challenges and difficult decisions yet to come.

I’d assure residents however, that we will continue to rise to these challenges, and we remain fully committed to doing all we can to protect our frontline services and ensure the most vulnerable in our communities are protected.