Councillors in Lincoln to approve 1.89% rise in city council tax

City of Lincoln Councillors will be asked to approve a 1.89% council tax increase as part of its budget next week.

A Full Council meeting to discuss the city authority’s budget will take place on Tuesday and members will be asked to approve the measure which would see a Band D property pay an extra £5.40 a year – a total of £290.79.

This is on top of a 4.99% increase to the county council contribution and a 3.75% increase for the Lincolnshire Police and Crime Commissioner. The tally for all three is £1,999.26 for a Band D property – an overall 4.35% increase.

In a series of reports, councillors will be told the authority still has a savings target of £1.5million in addition to the £10million already lost over the past decade. A further £5.8million of savings are estimated to be needed over the following four years.

It will have a spending requirement of £8.907million,  expected to rise to £11.279million for 2023/24 and £12.862million for 2024/25.

A report before councillors said: “The financial landscape for local government continues to pose an unprecedented challenge and is set in the context of significant, inherent, uncertainty with the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on income and expenditure and a lack of any form of clarity on future funding settlements from government.

“It is a long time since the council had any medium-term certainty… which makes financial planning in this climate extremely challenging”

Officers said the overriding strategy would continue to “drive down its net cost base to ensure it maintains a sound and sustainable financial position”.

However, it warns it will need to “revert to more traditional cost cutting measures”.

“Every possible effort is being made to find the least painful solutions and minimise the impact on jobs and services, but it is simply not possible to achieve the level of savings required, in the short term, through some of the more forward thinking or ambitious approaches previously adopted,” said the report.

“Inevitably there has had to be some withdrawal of services, the council has tried to keep this to a minimum and continues to seek to protect its core services that matter most.”