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Ever wondered what your council tax gets spent on? West Devon Borough Council has released its annual report and has listed some of the things that it spent money on last year.
Along with collecting 1.9 m domestic waste collections, West Devon Borough Council has processed 900 planning applications, investigated 130 abandoned vehicles, prevented 174 potential cases of homelessness and collected 450 fly tips. But this is just a snap shot of the services that your council provided.
From Environmental Health inspections on food premises so you don’t get ill when you eat out, to inspecting play parks so your children are safe and providing community grants and disabled facilities grants
Of the money that West Devon Borough Council collects from you in Council Tax only 12% of it goes towards paying for services provided by the Borough Council. The rest goes to Devon County Council, the police and emergency services and your Town or Parish Council.
This year West Devon’s net budget is approximately £7.4 m that is £1.2 million less than the council had to spent on the same services a few years ago.
Cllr Phil Sanders comments on the challenges ahead: “In a way we have been our own worst enemy, by managing our finances effectively and continuing to deliver your services despite continued cuts to our funding. We have reduced our workforce, brought in new computer technology, put more services online so we need less people to process our customer's requirements and we are continually trying to be more efficient.
“This comes across well in this annual report, not only have we managed to make £2.2 m worth of saving annually, which will keep us financially afloat up until 2020, but we have done this while improving our performance.”
In the last year the Borough Council has reduced the number of days it takes to process benefit claims from 39 days to 16, determined 96% of minor planning applications on time and along with South Hams District Council was given IESE’s Council of the year award.
Cllr Sanders continues: “Despite a good year, the financial challenges we face have not gone away, we know that our revenue support grant (money given to us by government to help fund services) will go completely by 2018, which means we are once again looking at how we can do things differently so that the statutory services we provide do not suffer.
“Unfortunately this has meant that we have had to make tough decisions like charging for garden waste which was a non-statutory service we provided free of charge and was not covered by your council tax. We simply could not afford to pay for it anymore, so rather than losing it we have given those people who would still like the service the option to pay for it.”
Looking at the next 12 months the reports sets out some of the council’s key projects they include, £36,000 Village Hall capital grant available, continue to make progress on the Joint Local plan, to support community led energy conservation projects, and provide £1/4 of a million towards the delivery of housing.
The full report can be found Here - Annual Report