Virtual Lancaster

Lancaster City Council set its revenue budget for 2009/10 this week, with a Full Council Meeting reversing an earlier decision to close Morecambe Dome, keeping open all but two public toilets that had been ear marked for closure and removing the proposed £20,000 cut to Lancaster and Morecambe Citizens Advice Bureaux.

Setting the budget at £23.999 million, Council accepted many of the recommendations prepared by Cabinet but also made a number of changes, which include:

• Keeping The Dome in Morecambe open for the 2009/10 season.Morecambe councillors argued The Platform is too small to host major events in the town, ignoring the fact that the venue is scheduled to be closed anyway in the near future despite this decision
• Removing the £20,000 cut to Lancaster and Morecambe Citizens Advice Bureaux in 2009/10. There will therefore be no cuts to the funding they receive next year and will be given a grant totalling £182,800. Keeping open all but two toilets. The only toilets to close will be at the end of Regent Road and on the promenade outside The Dome in Morecambe. That decision followed an investigation by the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee just one day before the Full Council meeting which rejected the proposal for the adoption of a ‘Richmond Scheme’ which would have seen toilets replaced by access to local business ‘facilities’. Councillors argued the cuts were disproportinate
• Retaining the Catch the Wind kite festival and Sandcastle Festival instead of the Lancaster Jazz Festival which will not now take place in 2009.
• Restoring £20,000 of the £40,000 reduction to The Dukes in Lancaster. The theatre will now receive £147,800 instead of the previously proposed £127,800.

The Lancaster Guardian reports that some of the extra cash to keep the Dome and public toilets open was found from a £1.1million council fund used for art and leisure provision.

“In common with other public bodies we were faced with tough choices when setting our budget,” commented Coun Abbott Bryning, Leader of Lancaster City Council. “The recession has impacted heavily on our finances and because we have less money coming in we have less to spend.

“Inevitably this has meant that some services we may had wanted to maintain or expand have had to be scaled back or ended completely.

“These choices have had to make to balance our books and ensure we provide a set of good quality core services which can continue to operate effectively.”

Cuts agreed by the Council’s Cabinet and accepted by Full Council include

• Scrapping Lancaster’s International Youth Games
• Salt Ayre Sports Centre will have its budget cut by 10% — £119,000. The Council is looking at ways to reduce costs at the Centre but the cut could mean it will close for two days a week
• Reductions in mowing at Lancaster Cemetery and on Broadway Bridge, Morecambe.
• £400 cut to the Mayoral budget
• Scrapping the Festivals Innovation Fund
• Cuts to 15 other organisations including charities and arts bodies
• Scrapping plans to introduce school recycling

Council has previously set next year’s increase in Council Tax at 4%. This means that from April 2009 Lancaster City Council’s proportion of Council Tax will be around £3.56 a week on average.

The city council retains around 13% of the total Council Tax bill with the remainder going to Lancashire County Council (74%) Lancashire Police Authority (9%) and Lancashire Combined Fire Authority (4%).

These authorities have increased their precepts as follows:

• Lancashire County Council: 2.9%
• Lancashire Police Authority: 4.5%
• Lancashire Combined Fire Authority: 3.74%

In addition, residents living in parished areas pay a precept to their parish council. Excluding Parish precepts the overall basic Band D increase in Council Tax will be 3.22%.