Swansea
Leader
Newspaper of the City and County of Swansea
Issue 102
March 2016
inside
How your council tax helps us deliver vital services - see centre pages your city: your paper
City centre Breathtaking regeneration plans take off plus
page 5
• INNOVATION: Wales’ first-ever course for a baby-sitting qualification has kicked off in Swansea and is helping young people prepare for a career in caring professions. See page 6 for more. Picture by Jason Rogers
SWANSEA Council is set to spend millions of pounds a week supporting local communities, education, social services, improving roads and keeping streets clean. The council will be spending around £1.5m a day, working even more closely with residents to ensure the money goes where people’s priorities are. Over the coming year there’s going to be £1m available for essential school repairs to add to investment in building schools, £2m for a new council house-building programme and £1m for road repairs. There is also an extra £3.2m in direct cash for schools budgets. Added to increases in pupil deprivation grant, the funding should meet the majority of cost pressures facing schools. Rob Stewart, Leader of the
we asked, you said
We’re targeting millions to your front line priorities OVER the coming year the council needs to make £21m of savings to add to around £50m of savings already achieved over the last few years. It’s expected an additional £55m of savings will have to be found in the following years. The council has already cut management costs by millions of pounds over the last few years. It’s also streamlining administrative services, introducing smarter ways of working and reducing overheads by investing in more digital technology. This has meant more services have become accessible online with more to come in the years ahead. For example, residents can pay their council tax and renew resident parking permits online 24/7.
Council, said that the council was striving to be smarter, leaner and more efficient. He said as much of the annual budget as possible is being spent on front line priorities identified by the people of Swansea. He said: “We are rising to meet the challenge by continuing our programme of reviewing all our areas of spending – including areas like cultural services, waste management and highways - to see how we continue to ensure every penny that’s
spent is used wisely and to the bestpossible effect for the people of Swansea.” Cllr Stewart said: “Our Sustainable Swansea – Fit for the Future initiative has been widely welcomed because it will help us continue to support vital services by becoming smarter and more efficient. “Despite the budget reductions all councils in Wales are facing, Swansea is in a good position to continue supporting children and
older people, tackle poverty and invest in intervention and prevention services which will help save money in the long term.” Following consultation with the public, the council also intends to open the Morfa Relief Road a year early, continue to keep its public toilets open, maintain libraries at their current numbers and create community budgets to fund small but much-needed local projects. There will also be ongoing investment in community transport and tackling littering and dog fouling. Cllr Stewart said: “Thanks to the consultation we’ve done with local people our budget plans have been strengthened. The council is listening to our local communities and by continuing to work closely with them we’ll be even more focussed on delivering on their priorities every day.”
Air show High-flyers are back in city this summer page 3
Recycling Let’s all do our bit to hit the targets page 7
School builds a top priority page 9