Council tax for Merthyr Tydfil residents will go up by 5.5% next year

Anthony Lewis – Local democracy reporter

Council tax for Merthyr Tydfil residents is set to rise by 5.5% next year.

The budget and full council tax increase was voted through by full council on Wednesday, March 5.

It means that the amount paid to Merthyr Tydfil Council for a band D property will be £2,083.21 for 2025-26, an extra £108.60 next year or £2.09 per week.

The budget report said that 84% of the properties within the county borough were valued at bands A to C so a significant proportion of council taxpayers would pay less than £2,083.21.

The report added that there would be a range of increases from £1.39 per week at the lowest band A to £4.87 per week at the highest Band I.

The council’s budget for next year will be worth £172.51m.

Increase

The Welsh Government settlement resulted in a funding increase of 4.9% for Merthyr Tydfil next year.

Adjustments made in 2024-25 and the 4.9% increase for 2025-26 means there is additional funding of £9.65m for Merthyr Tydfil.

The council was previously looking at an £8.77m budget gap but this was then reduced to £5.28m taking into account the impact of the revenue settlement, pay pressures, adjustments to the council tax base, additional service demands, a review of assumptions, savings not achieved in 2024-25, and a contribution to the general fund reserves.

The budget approved by councillors said that no additional savings were required from schools during 2025/2026 but added that, due to the ongoing financial challenges faced by local government, the budget did not provide the funding required to fully support the schools funding formula due to previous efficiency savings required from the schools delegated budget.

Charges

There will be a standard 2.5% increase in non-regulated fees and charges in line with the rate of inflation on January 1.

The budget includes £3.27m of savings from council departments made up of £130,000 from education, £1.61m from social services, £837,000 from neighbourhood services, £637,000 from economy and public protection and £55,000 from governance and resources.

A savings target of £354,000 is also included through the council’s transformation programme.

The budget includes the use of £1.5 million of earmarked reserves to help deal with the budget deficit and this will be funded from the surplus in 2023/24 and there is no proposal to use general reserves.

Councillor Andrew Barry of the Independent group, said: “I am disappointed with the budget.

He said: “This for me is the dose of reality in terms of where nationally we stand with a defence budget about to increase to 2.5 and some calls in Europe for 3%.”

He said: “We needed a longer term budget. This budget is unashamedly one year.

“We can’t afford to do one year budgets. We have to look longer term.”

He said the former administration started its deliberations in May last year and they ended up with an 86 point plan.

Cllr Barry said: “Transformation doesn’t happen with conversation, transformation doesn’t happen with plans, it happens with action and we’ve missed an opportunity.”

He said he didn’t see in the efficiencies anything other than the use of grants and some cuts saying “that’s not good enough, it’s nowhere near good enough.”

Settlement

Cllr Barry said: “This was a good settlement. A very good settlement. That next settlement is nine months away in December and it’s going to be catastrophic for this authority if we use the same methods that we’ve used to set this budget.”

The Labour leader, Councillor Brent Carter, said the 86-point plan was not their plan and they were not the things they thought they should be implementing going forward but there might be some points they could pick and choose.

On the use of grants being unsustainable, he said they all knew it was unsustainable but the previous administration also used grants.

Councillor Jamie Scriven, independent cabinet member for regeneration and housing, said: “We should’ve been working together from the start. There should’ve been co-productivity between the groups in what was going on.”

He said they were happy to take recommendations on and listen to ideas but they had plans of their own that they wanted to put in place.

Slack

He said he didn’t think it was fair that since they’d only been in administration since September for people to throw fingers and say that this was ridiculous when the current administration had had to pick up the slack because of the failure of the previous one.

Councillor Geraint Thomas of the Independent group said: “There’s a lot of things in the report which for me are very unclear.

“Our residents are still living in a cost-of-living crisis, energy prices are increasing.”

He said the things that were unclear for him were the £500,000 plus in terms of additional demands in leisure services and about £300,000 in national insurance contributions for commissioned services

He said when you added that up you were talking about £800,000 which was getting close to 3% in council tax so it was about choices.

He said: “This Labour administration here has chosen to put stuff in the budget which is quite unclear and increase council tax to 5.5%.

“They could have made different choices and taken some of that away and perhaps put a council tax in around 3%. And that’s a choice they’ve got to make.”

Committed

He said the Independent group would not support the budget.

Councillor Louise Minett-Vokes, Labour cabinet member for social services, said: “This is not about cutting services it’s about making them work better for people who rely on them.

“The team remain committed  to protecting social services and ensure the most vulnerable in our community continue to receive the support they need.

“Through your tireless efforts we’ve continued to protect essential services while ensuring that resources are used effectively and efficiently.”

Councillor Gareth Lewis, cabinet member for education, said there had been uplifts across the board for each and every department across the local authority which was a positive.

But he said one swallow didn’t make a summer and one good settlement from Welsh Government would not unravel 14 years of austerity but a 4.9% increase in the revenue settlement grant was “hugely welcome.”

He said he was particularly pleased that they’d requested no money from schools to plug the budget deficit as had happened in previous years under the Independent administration.