Have your say on the council’s budget priorities

To help supply of the council’s four-year Company Plan, the council units its funds every year stating how a lot cash there’s to spend and what the funds shall be spent on. 

This yr is especially difficult, and pressing work is being undertaken to assist stability the funds. Present forecasts present the council should make complete financial savings of greater than £53m over the subsequent three years. 

North Somerset residents and stakeholders are invited to take part in a web-based funds improvement survey at https://n-somerset.inconsult.uk/budget202526/consultationHome from at this time till cut-off date Friday 22 November, 5pm. 

The survey asks residents for his or her key priorities, points they’re involved with, what they’d significantly wish to prioritise for funding and enchancment, what degree of council tax enhance they might help within the coming yr and their most popular strategy for delivering council companies.

This yr, for the primary time, there’s additionally a funds simulator the place residents can ‘construct your individual funds’ to make the £53 million saving. Residents can experiment with numerous funds choices and see the doubtless influence of their selections on the companies we ship.

The council may even be holding a collection of workshops over the approaching months to run by means of the funds simulator and your concepts for the place they may make financial savings and/or enhance revenue and assist stability the funds. 

Councillor Mike Bell, Chief of the Council, shall be internet hosting the workshops and shall be joined by members of the Govt and council officers. If you’re keen on attending considered one of these in-person workshops, please be a part of our Citizen’s Panel.

Alternatively, the council is internet hosting two ‘funds drop in’ periods that are open to all residents and companions. No must e book, please simply drop by.

• Thursday 7 November between 5.30pm and 7pm on the City Corridor in Weston-super-Mare. Please arrive on the library reception and a council officer will meet you there. 
• Thursday 14 November between 5.30pm and 7pm at North Somerset Council’s ‘Castlewood’ workplace in Clevedon. Please arrive at reception and a council officer will meet you there. 

Right here residents will have the ability to meet council workers, discuss by means of the survey and reply any questions they might have.

Councillor Mike Bell, Chief of North Somerset Council stated: “We’d like everybody throughout North Somerset to participate in our funds improvement engagement and tell us their views and priorities by the cut-off date of Friday 22 November, 5pm. Your suggestions is invaluable and can assist inform our funds. Like many councils throughout the nation, we’re going through an unprecedented monetary problem. After years of austerity and reductions in authorities funding, we fairly merely don’t have sufficient revenue to cowl our forecast expenditure. We’re going to should make powerful choices and your suggestions will assist us know your priorities.

“We are attempting to do greater than ever to tell and contain residents and companions on this course of and assist us to deal with these points collectively. For this reason this yr we’ve launched each a survey and an progressive funds simulator to provide residents a voice. We may even be operating devoted periods with panels of our residents to work collectively by means of the challenges and choices we now have.

“We can not promise to ship every little thing that our residents ask for or may need, however we’ll use the outcomes of this work to tell our choices. Good choices are the results of working collectively and I might urge everybody to interact and have a say.” 

A funds replace, together with the engagement session suggestions, shall be introduced on the subsequent Govt assembly on Wednesday 4 December. 

Proposed financial savings plans shall be shared in December forward of ultimate funds discussions in February.