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The Budget 2013/14

Budget Headlines

• The budget for 2013/14 will produce £1.9m of savings. This is in addition to the £5million of efficiency savings that the council has already achieved since the government announced its Spending Review in 2010.
• The savings required include a reduction in income of £1.2 million, and part of this is due to the difficult economic climate. For example we've had to take account of a reduction in our parking revenue and a reduction in our waste subsidy income.
• We are using £0.35million of our reserves to support our spending, which is less than we used in 2012/13 (around £0.6million).
• The borough council's Council Tax precept was frozen for the fourth consecutive year, helped by a Council Tax freeze grant.
• Generally the council has limited increases in fees and charges as part of its budget - in particular we have not increased our short term car park charges for 2013/14.

How we are making savings

We undertook a number of service reviews during 2012 which identified savings in the region of £0.705m for 2013/14. We are also due to deliver £0.594m of savings through procurement and re-negotiation of contract specifications. Other key savings include reduction of non-essential spending such as IT equipment, subscriptions, and premises related expenditure, which amount to about £0.34m.

Reduction in Government Funding

Our Grant Settlement for 2013/14 from central government was £6.37 million. This is 7.3% lower on a like-for-like basis than our previous grant.

The government has introduced major changes to the structure of the local government finance system. Our 2013/14 grant includes the introduction of these changes - in particular, the business rates retention system which allows us to keep a proportion of the business rates income generated locally.

Investing in Welwyn Hatfield

We are still investing significant amounts of capital in our buildings and land, to continue improving Welwyn Hatfield as a place to live, work and shop. These include some major investments:

• £14.3m for housing, including £2.5m for Social Housing Programme and £500,000 for Housing Mortgage Rescue Scheme
• £4.4m for Council Offices extension and improvements
• leisure and community facilities, including £550,000 for Campus West refurbishment
• £2.1m for the continued redevelopment of Hatfield Town Centre
• £1.4m for Chantry Lane Chalk Mines remediation works

Further Information

The 2013/14 general fund budget and capital investment programme was approved by the Full Council on 27 February 2013. 

 Capital budgets 2013-14 to 2017-18 [159KB]

 General Fund Budget 2013/14 Cabinet Committee paper (January 2013) [1MB]