Council Leader Chris Read on the 2023 budget said:

“Colleagues – as ever I need to start by thanking all the members who have contributed to the huge piece of work that brings these budget proposals before us. And to Judith and the Finance team, the Chief Executive, and the senior leadership team whose commitment and professionalism serves our communities so well.

Three Prime Ministers, three Secretaries of State and five Housing Ministers ago, we met here last March the wake of the Covid pandemic to set our budget for the 22/23 financial year.

The first Prime Minister declared social care to be “fixed” through a levy. The second one cancelled it.

The second local government minister said there was fat to trim, the third was forced to bail out councils in trouble.

The second Prime Minister delivered what the Daily Mail called a “true Tory budget”, and the third one’s making us all pay for it.

Right now, councils across the country are facing the most challenging ever financial environment for local government.

Thurrock issued a Section 114 notice three months ago – formally acknowledging that it couldn’t pay its way. They are looking at a 10% council tax rise. Slough 10%. Croydon as much as 15%.

I said last year that if we’d gone with the council tax gimmick proposed by the opposition then this year we’d be imposing the highest council tax increase anywhere in the country.

It turns out I was wrong – if we’d gone with the Conservative plan it would only be the fourth biggest in the country.

Instead, because we will keep making the difficult choices, ours is the third lowest increase of any upper tier authority in Yorkshire this year. For the fourth successive year we will come in below the government’s referendum cap, saving the typical Rotherham household £85 over the period.

And because we’ve done the difficult things, the boring things, even in these difficult times we can give the people who depend on our services some certainty.

Even in the face of the ongoing crisis in Adult Social Care we can commit to a £12 million uplift in our contracts, making sure that those services remain sustainable, and helping our providers to increase the basic rates of pay for staff who do such critical work.

And we’re especially prioritising home care services with an above inflation increase in spending, at a time when we know that hospital beds are under incredible pressure and more people need to be supported at home.

Last year we set out investments in street cleaning – and this Winter we’ve more Streetpride staff working on our streets than there have been since the start of austerity.

160 more roads have been repaired this year because of our investment programme. The number of potholes in our roads is down by 60% since 2015.

We put extra money into youth work, and it’s taking place regularly now, in Parkgate, Dinnington, Kimberworth, Maltby and Blackburn.

And because of the choices we made then and that we propose today, those investments are secure for the future. This is a budget that protects the basic services that our residents rely on.

That’s the choice we’re making today.

More money to improve our household waste recycling centres as they come back in house over the next few years.

New bin lorries to meet the growing demand for household waste collections.

Maintaining the extra call handling in our contact centre.

A £1.25 million capital investment in maintenance equipment for street scene services and green spaces. £110,000 to respond to service requests in our urban parks and woodlands.

Improvements at Rother Valley Country Park to go alongside the new café, events space, car parking and cycle hub there.

£1.7 million to ensure that Centenary Way is returned to working order.

£300,000 for minor road improvements to help make bus services a little more reliable, £600,000 for traffic light improvements, and a 2% increase in the transport levy that will contribute to a £1 million uplift in the local funding available to support South Yorkshire’s bus services.

But as I hope councillors are aware we go into this budget setting facing a £10 million gap.

The cost of rising inflation, energy costs and an unfunded national pay settlement simply hasn’t been met by the increases in central funding.

Right now we need to make more difficult decisions on cuts and savings, but we are doing everything within our power to protect frontline services. So in saving £4.7 million over the next two years, we are proposing a balanced budget for both 23/24 and 24/25.

We’re focussing on extracting the most value from external funding and continuing to drive efficiencies.

But I say to members on all sides that if we didn’t do that, we would be facing a structural hole in our budget too great to be papered over, too wide to be ignored, and that would lead us into real difficulties in the coming two years.

I’m sorry that not all members seem to have realised the gravity of that situation.

The same pressures that are hitting the budgets of every household in our borough are also affecting ours.

The council’s budget has been left fragile by austerity like so many households that haven’t had a pay rise in over a decade.

Since we began making payments last May, more than four and a half thousand families have accessed our Energy Crisis grants. The demand has been so great that the £1.4 million fund is being exhausted.

So today I can confirm that we’ll commit up to an extra half a million pounds next month from the government’s Business Rates Levy Surplus to ensure that it runs through until the end of this financial year, and we’ll commit a further half million pounds through the Household Support Fund to continue it from April.

Every year I report that the demand for our food banks is still rising. Over the last Christmas period, demand for food parcels through our partnership was 13% higher than the previous year.

We funded 521 Christmas hampers to families who needed them – up on 300 the year before.

One of the recipients said that “I just don’t know what I would have done without it”.

I suppose the Secretary of State for DEFRA would tell us that turnips are an option.

So we’re putting those on the lowest incomes at the heart of these cost of living proposals.

We’ll extend again our Local Council Tax Support top up, to ensure that all 10,000 Band A working age households on full council tax support are lifted out of all borough-wide council tax altogether.

We’re extending free school meal holiday vouchers for a further twelve months.

We’re committing hundreds of thousands of pounds more to Discretionary Housing Payments – even as the government reduces the national funding year on year – to help our residents to keep a roof over their heads.

But it’s not enough just to help people in crisis. We’ve got to secure the jobs and build a local economy that serves the needs of our communities.

That’s why our Employment Solutions Team has helped more than a thousand local people into work or training.

The amount of money the council spends in the local economy has nearly doubled in the last three years.

It’s why we’ve invested in our business centres for new startups, including investment in today’s proposals for the Century Business Centre in Manvers – with the new facility at Century 2 right next door now well under construction.

It’s why we welcome the government’s investment in our high street and at Templeborough.

But we all know that a few weeks ago, they really let us down over Dinnington and Wath. £20 million of investment dismissed without ministers apparently ever reading the bid, so more money was available to Conservative held seats in the south of England.

I say to our friends opposite – your leadership has given up on you – and the public know it.

The council simply cannot afford to make up those sorts of sums. But today we can announce a £2 million extension of Labour’s Towns and Villages Fund, and I want to be clear that Wath and Dinnington will be the priorities for this extra money.

Where the government has let those communities down, we are stepping up.

And if Conservative councillors are serious about seeing that investment, they will be voting for these proposals this afternoon.

So even in difficult times, we can make a difference.

Whether it’s supporting our local bus services, funding social care that supports our NHS, tackling the cost of living crisis – or investing in our local centres – we are stepping up where this government is failing us.

This was the year that the government said Rotherham didn’t deserve a penny of Bus Service Improvement funds or Levelling Up Transport money for better buses.

This was the year that saw a quarter of ambulances waiting outside A&E at Rotherham Hospital for more than half an hour, while a thousand more Rotherham children came to depend on free school meals.

So we must step up.

On all these things the national government let our communities down. And on all these things Labour are picking up the baton and delivering for the people of this borough.

For all the challenges that we face, this administration is stepping up – and we are building that better borough.

Mr Mayor – I move the budget.