Car parking charges and Council Tax increase feature in proposed budget

A district Council Tax increase is on the cards, with the authority's budget also including changes to car parking tariffs.

Transcript

00:00 You look at what we offer, you get an amazing value for money from this.

00:05 You could find a way of spending £200 a year better than by living in West Suffolk,

00:10 having your bins emptied every week, having thriving markets.

00:14 If you can find a better deal than that, let me know because I'll take it.

00:20 They look at the newspapers, they see the television, they see other councils are in

00:26 trouble. Thorough has been mentioned and that was a complete disaster.

00:30 So when they look at our budget, they must be quite reassured.

00:34 It's a 3% increase and none of the services have really been affected.

00:40 There's been an increase in the horticultural budget, which is brilliant. They've got

00:48 additional people working on the grounds maintenance and they've got some additional

00:53 machinery as well. So they see that we're still investing. We've made some big investments to get

01:02 an income. Because central government has cut our funds, we invest in a solar farm. We're getting a

01:07 good return on that. We're investing in our business parks with barley homes and an initiative

01:15 for additional housing in West Suffolk is a positive. That's an investment.

01:21 And we still managed to find money for leisure facilities as well. Every market town,

01:28 Sizable Market Town in West Suffolk has got a leisure facility. So we haven't forgotten that.

01:33 We've responded to people in the way of car parks as well, as we said,

01:38 we're getting rid of the night charge across Bury.

01:40 And that would be much easier for people to manage. And we've listened to the extra

01:48 hour in the short term car park. And when you have car parking, your nearest the town is always

01:54 going to be where everybody wants to be. But you said that means you've got to try and encourage

01:59 a spread. So the way we do that is we have longer term, longer stay car parks, which are a little

02:05 bit further away. And if you want to be in the short term car park, you just pay fractionally

02:10 more and everybody makes the decision. But it does mean that everybody gets to pay, everybody

02:16 gets to park rather. Whereas we used to have a situation where people would drive up, I can't

02:21 get in that car park, drive around to another one. By the way that we've managed the car parks with

02:26 the times, especially in Bury, then we've managed that. And that's what we're continuing to try and

02:32 do. Obviously, in some of the smaller towns like Brandon, we're not charging because you want to

02:38 keep every high street, every town profitable. And this council is West Suffolk. It's not just

02:45 about Bury, it's about Bury, Haverhill, Newmarket, Clare, Brandon and all those villages all the way

02:51 around.