Issue - meetings

Background:

The Cabinet accepted this report as urgent to enable consideration of the matter at the earliest opportunity given that the final budget proposals would be submitted to the next scheduled Cabinet meeting on 4 February 2020.

This report provided details of the provisional local government settlement announced by the Secretary of State on 20 December 2019. It also provided updated assumptions in relation to locally raised taxes.

The report explained that the Council Tax referendum limit had returned to its historic level of 2%, however the Adult Social Care precept had been extended for a further year, allowing upper tier authorities the flexibility to increase Council Tax by a further 2% above the referendum limit. Medway’s Draft Budget assumed that Council Tax would be increased by 3.994%. In addition, it had been confirmed that the 50% business rate retention scheme would continue in its existing form and Medway remained a top-up authority.

The report also provided details of the impact on other grants, set out at sections 6 to 10 of the report.

Reasons:

These provisional levels of grant are a fundamental component of the 2020/21 budget, and their announcement is a further stage in the process of preparing a balanced budget.