Last year, the council used a tool called YouChoose, in which residents were asked to say how they would increase or decrease the budget across a range of council services, to meet the council’s savings targets and set a balanced budget.
In the YouChoose exercise, residents identified a number of services where they thought the biggest savings could be made. These included planning services, managing parks and public spaces, waste collection and recycling, running community centres, street cleaning, and enforcing environmental standards.
This year, the council asked a group of residents and businesses to take part in workshops to look in more detail at where savings could be made from the services picked out last year.
The findings are detailed in a report that councillors will consider as they set about putting together next year’s budget.
The workshops revealed that residents and businesses felt waste collection and recycling, street cleansing, parks maintenance, and planning, were particularly important services, either because they used them on a day-to-day basis or because they were important to maintaining Cambridge as an attractive city for residents and visitors.
Residents said that support for families, children, disabled people and older people was also important to them.
When asked to consider some specific savings proposals, residents and business were not supportive of ideas such as removing catch-up bin collections following bank holidays, scaling back work on conserving the historic environment in the planning process, or reducing time spent negotiating with developers on planning applications for new developments.
However, they thought there were opportunities to make savings on the out of hours noise service and moving from fortnightly green bin collections to monthly collections in winter months.
Some residents expressed concern about matters relating to county council services and issues that are not solely in the city council’s area of responsibility, such as traffic congestion and cyclists using pavements rather than cycle-ways.
Savings of £6.5m need to be found by 2021 out of an annual net budget of approximately £20m in order for the council to balance its budget.
This figure could change depending on the level of grant that the government decides to give to councils – something that is to be announced in December.
Savings are already being sought by changing the way services are provided through new business models, sharing more services with neighbouring councils and further reducing overheads.
Reviewing discretionary services to make sure they are focused on those people in greatest need may also yield further savings.
Cllr George Owers, Executive Councillor for Finance and Resources, said: “These workshops with residents give us some useful information as we start preparing next year’s budget, which we will do against the backdrop of needing to save £6.5m over the next five years.
“To achieve those savings we are looking at providing services in different ways, sharing more with other councils and reducing overheads wherever we can.
“We will stay focused on managing our finances responsibly to balance the budget, keeping the need for cuts in service to the minimum and investing in a fairer, more equal city.”
The government’s spending review is expected in November, followed by the local government finance settlement which sets out how much government grant will be given to councils, expected in December.
The council’s proposed budget setting report will be published in early January.
- Three workshops took place in August and September 2015 involving residents and businesses. The workshops were led by representatives from BMG Research, a firm appointed by the council to produce the research report. The workshops focussed on the key services identified by residents in the 2014 budget consultation as offering the greatest opportunity for savings.
- The first part of each workshop was devoted to looking at the different areas that fall within the services under consideration. Residents were asked which of these they valued most and least. In the second part of the workshops, a number of specific savings proposals were put forward for prioritisation by residents and businesses..
___________________________________________________________