LAST week, Bury Council passed its budget for the years 2017 to 2020.

Due to Government cuts, the council will lose £32 million over this period. This is on top of the £65 million that has been between 2011 and 2016.

This means that a staggering £97 million will have been lost by 2020, almost 70 per cent of the council’s overall budget.

This is at a time when the demand for council services has never been greater particularly in the area of social care.

Approximately 35p out of every pound that the council spends is on social care with demand and costs rising due a growing, ageing population.

Due to the dramatic cuts to our funding, the council was left with no alternative other than to introduce the Government’s social care precept, which is equivalent to a 3 per cent rise on council tax bills.

This is effectively shifting the burden from central government to local taxpayers. If our budget was not being cut, then we would not have to do this.

The social care precept will generate £2.1 million which will be spent exclusively on funding services that support social care, but will not go close to plugging the gap in social care funding in the borough. That, unfortunately, will mean cuts to other services.

Bury Council is underfunded compared to other councils by reference to the national average (£9 million less per year) and the Greater Manchester average (£18 million less).

We are actively lobbying our two local MPs, Bury North MP David Nuttall and Bury South MP Ivan Lewis, to fight for the borough in Parliament. With the national budget due on March 8 now is a crucial time to fight for better funding to protect front line services and specifically support better funding for social care.

We also recognise that the local budget should not all be about making cuts so we have made it a priority to invest £10 million over three years to improve the borough’s road network.

This is capital, so not money that can be spent to fund frontline services. We want to keep the borough moving, tackle potholes and carrying out much needed re-surfacing works on major arterial roads.

We will invest £100,000 to tackle the scourge of fly-tipping and littering to keep the borough tidy.

We will support new businesses by funding a business academy to provide advice and guidance to start ups.

Later on this month, the council’s Life Chances Commission will report on how we can improve skill levels in the borough and attract high-quality jobs, helping us devise our own post-Brexit plan for Bury.

We will launch a refreshed anti-poverty strategy to ensure that the inequality gap in Bury does not become a chasm, seeking to tackle inequality at its roots.

These are incredibly difficult times, but while our resources may be diminishing rapidly, Bury Labour’s ambition for our borough will has never been greater.

Cllr Rishi Shori

Bury Council Leader