Dear Resident,
Your council tax pays for the day-to-day services provided by the Borough, these include:
- Streetcare and community wardens
- Rubbish collection
- Parks and open spaces
- Leisure facilities
- Local planning
- Grants to voluntary and community organisations
- Licensing
We are moving into the second year of a three year plan that sets clear community priorities for investing in improving services. These focus on making the most efficient use of resources and providing affordable homes; clean, safe streets and support for learning and skills opportunities.
Our key priorities are:
- Making the best use of our resources to meet community priorities within a stable budget.
- Providing people with affordable decent homes within planned sustainable communities.
- Achieving a safe, clean and sustainable built and natural environment for residents, businesses and visitors across the borough.
- Improving opportunities in learning and skills, and continuing to support individual development, community organisations and local businesses.
Much has been achieved in these four priority areas in the first year of the council plan. There are ambitious proposals to make more improvements over the coming year.
Our services to the community come from four main sources of income:
- Your council tax
- Government grants
- Income from our property
- The interest we earn on our investments
We have made an inflation-based increase in council tax of 2.5% this year to safeguard your services.
This amounts to an increase of just over 4p a week for a band D council taxpayer, or £2.25 for the whole year. This means that someone living in a band D property where there is no parish council will pay £92.09, just over £1.77 a week.
This is the third year in a row that the increase in Basingstoke & Deane's council tax has been set at 2.5%, following three years in which there was no increase in the borough council's share of the council tax at all.
To find out in more detail how your money is spent, please download the attached leaflet in full.