Balancing the budget while supporting our most vulnerable

A monthly column from Swindon Council Leader David Renard

Budgeting for the future is an incredibly important part of local government and this month Cabinet colleagues and I will take decisions which will set the council’s course over the next financial year.

Balancing the budget is becoming harder and harder each year as the impact of covid means that the demand for social care services supporting vulnerable adults and children continues to grow and our income from all sources does not grow at the same rate. Various Government grants have helped but many of them are for one year only.

The really challenging picture is compounded by the fact that the council's income from many sources declined or disappeared during the pandemic and has not returned to previous levels. All this means is that there is still a gap in our budget and our officers have been working tirelessly to close it so we can continue to provide the services our residents want and expect.

Of course, a number of the services that require the most funding are those which the vast majority of readers do not need. Demand for the services we provide to vulnerable children and those adults with social care needs still accounts for around 80 percent of our budget, which is why residents are likely to continue to see a rise in their council tax again next year.

The support we provide to thousands of vulnerable children and adults has never been more important, especially during the pandemic, and it has been truly inspiring to see our staff continue to provide the very best services they can in unprecedented times.

I am sure Swindon Link readers were as pleased as I was to learn that our plans to improve our wonderful parklands are beginning to take shape.

We are very lucky to have some great parks across the Borough, not least Coate Water, which is set to benefit from some improvements later this year.

The first of these will involve cleaning and refurbishing the lake’s iconic diving board which many of you will know has seen better days. We need to submit a planning and listed building application to carry out the work, but we hope to be able to do it this spring.

We also had a fabulous response to our consultation for the new children’s play area at Coate Water, which will be relocated to a more accessible position nearer to the public toilets, refreshment kiosk and car park.

We want the play park to be fully inclusive and we will be going out to tender for the £500,000 project soon.

There are plenty of other improvements we want to make to our other parks over the next few years. Covid has shown us that we value our open spaces for our personal wellbeing and we are determined to improve those public areas so that more people can enjoy them and reap the benefits that being in the outdoors can bring.

Watch this space.