Budget 2007/2008 Overview

Council Tax

The Council has built upon its record of low Council Tax increases with a Council Tax rise of 1.5% – well below the rate of inflation and equivalent to only 33p a week.

This will mean a band D Council Tax level of £1,169 – an increase of £17 on last year’s band D council tax of £1,152 – less than Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee.

Edinburgh is a low tax city. Since 1996 Edinburgh has delivered the second lowest council tax increase in Scotland, despite having the lowest grant per head in Scotland from the Government and losing £111 million in business rates to central government last year.

The challenges of setting the Council’s budget

The Council is a large and diverse business with an annual spend of around £1 billion. How the budget is spent affects residents and people who work in or visit the city.
The total budget comes from various sources. In the financial year 2006/2007 the breakdown was:
• 51% from central government
• 22% from Council Tax
• 27% from rates paid by businesses (non domestic rates).

The Council sets its budget facing significant pressures and resource limits. Recently these have included single status and equal pay settlements, increased demand for services in child protection and homelessness, increasing numbers of older people, future costs of waste collection and disposal, rising energy costs and the need to deliver more localised services to Edinburgh’s communities.

How the budget will be spent

Tough and effective action against crime
The Council already funds, in partnership with the police, more than 90 police officers in the biggest ever investment in community policing by any Scottish local authority. Adding to this, new Youth Action Teams will be created with £500,000 to fund 18 extra police officers.

In 2007/2008 the Council will help make communities in Edinburgh even safer by investing
£2.3 million to take tough and effective action against antisocial behaviour.
£500,000 will be used to support 18 city centre police officers.

£54,500 will be used to introduce and deploy seven new portable CCTV cameras.

Investing in young people and education
School and community centre refurbishments will be supported by £4.1 million. This is over and above the forthcoming schools investment through PPP2.

A new primary school is planned for Granton Waterfront with investment of more than
£11 million. Work is due to begin in 2009/2010. At James Gillespie's High School there are plans to replace deteriorating external brickwork and structural windows, to allow safe and continued use of the building. The total cost of the work will be £1 million.

£200,000 to develop a new children’s play area in West Princes Street Gardens and an adventure play area in Craigmillar Jubilee Park.

£2.78 million of additional funding, received by the Scottish Executive, will reduce primary one class sizes to 25, and first and second year English and Maths classes in secondary schools to an average of 20.

£207,000 will expand the Bookstart scheme to provide free books for every two and three-year-old in the city.

Caring for those who are vulnerable
This budget will provide total extra investment of £10 million to support the city’s most vulnerable people, from the young to the old. We need to provide our most vulnerable residents with the care and support they need.

This will include an extra £2.4 million to help children in care and their families, bringing the total spend to £16 million. £3 million more will be spent on care at home services, most of which will be spent on older people.

An extra £1.9 million on a budget of £10 million is for foster parents of vulnerable children.
£2.2 million will be spent on services for young people and adults with learning disabilities, while
£1 million will provide accommodation and support for homeless people in the city.

£2.75 million will support people to live in their own homes rather than residential care.

£4.3 million will help to accommodate children and young people, £400,000 will be used for Child Practice Teams and £400,000 for Home to School Transport.

The Council has been raising better awareness of child protection issues in recent years. Child protection referrals have risen by 71% over four years and an additional £300,000 investment will help to reduce the caseload per social worker.

The construction of a purpose built facility on the Seaview site will improve the quality of respite care and learning environment for children with complex additional needs. Work totalling
£1.5 million is due to begin in 2009/2010.

Improving sports facilities
Development of the national sports facilities continues with the £86 million project reaching a critical phase in terms of design work and planning applications this year. This is vital project to deliver top-class sporting facilities across the city, as well as ensuring the Royal Commonwealth Pool is available for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Local and amateur sports will receive an important boost with a further £2.5 million funding for pitches and pavilions. This will be used to improve sports pitches and pavilions across the city. Further investment is to be brought forward under the Prudential Framework.

£70,000 will be used to upgrade tennis courts at Inverleith Park.

£30,000 will be spent on a dedicated development officer for the city's sports clubs.

Improving neighbourhoods and delivering neighbourhood services
£500,000 has been allocated to complete a new Community Recycling Centre, the fourth for the city, which will open in Sighthill in 2007.

£27 million will be spent on installing modern kitchens and bathrooms and to improve heating and insulation in Council homes.

£7 million will be used to demolish sub-standard Council houses.

The city’s Neighbourhood Partnerships will receive £3 million for improving their local environment and the quality of life for residents.

Housing associations will have £18 million available to build around 250 new affordable homes in the city.

£1.064 million will be spent completing the refurbishment of Stockbridge and Morningside Libraries, and a review of other library services will be carried out. This will include looking at the potential of building a library in Drumbrae.
£1.75 million will be spent on improving neighbourhood roads and pavements.

Cleaner and safer streets
£800,000 invested in extending recycling to cover an additional 30,000 tenement properties.

£400,000 will be used to increase street cleaning, especially in the summer, improve parks and extend the Barrow Beat service.

£250,000 will be spent expanding the Community Safety Night-Time Team to include Licensing Standards Officers, Environmental Wardens and additional Community Safety Officers.

Improving the look of the city
We are continuing to improve city centre public spaces creating areas for people to relax and enjoy. Over £7.6 million will be spent on St. Andrew Square (jointly funded with Scottish Enterprise Edinburgh and Lothian). The Square itself will be revamped and opened to the public for the first time in over 200 years. The pavements and roads around the Square will also be improved.

There are also plans for improving public space in the Grassmarket. This £5.1 million project is being jointly funded with Scottish Enterprise Edinburgh and Lothian.

Retaining Edinburgh’s status as a cultural city
The Edinburgh International Festival will receive additional funding of £700,000 in total, with £350,000 from the Council and the same amount the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Arts Council combined.

Work begins this year on Phase II of the Usher Hall redevelopment, which has a total budget of around £20 million. The Hall will be renovated into a venue fit for the 21st Century and will reopen in winter 2008.
A Classical Music Transition Fund of £165,000 will support the Usher Hall and the national orchestras to support and build the audiences for classical music in the city.

£75,000 will be used to implement the City of Edinburgh Cultural Entitlements Manifesto, delivering cultural services to local people, involving all sectors of the community, with a particular commitment to work in partnership with all equalities groups.

Supporting travel around the city
Additional funds will be available for supported bus services. £500,000 will be used to review routes that were previously withdrawn and consider new routes.

£500,000 will be spent increasing the number of hugely popular Bustracker real-time information signs.

We will increase the frequency of some bus routes through £250,000 of extra funding.

£1.3 million will be used in 2007/2008 for the development of the Straiton Park and Ride site.

Construction of Edinburgh's trams - the capital's biggest ever investment in its infrastructure - begins in March 2007 (pending final approval by the Scottish Executive in February 2007). Trams should be up and running by 2011 and will transform the way people travel in the city.  Trams are funded by the Scottish Executive, developers' contributions and other funds and are not connected to Council Tax.

Investing in roads and road safety
£23 million will be invested this year (2007/2008) to improve the city's roads and pavements, with a total of £61 million to be spent over the next three years.

£400,000 will be spent on schemes to help reduce accidents on the city’s roads. One of these will include reducing the speed limit on Maybury Road. We will also look at developing other schemes, such as applying anti-skid treatments around certain junctions.

Over £800,000 will be spent making changes to our roads, paths and cyclepaths to make them safer. This will help to make them attractive to children to walk or cycle to school. This funding will include more 20 mph zones in the city which have helped Edinburgh to improve its road safety record.

£280,000 will be spent on upgrading Pelican crossings to Puffin crossings in some areas of the city.

Saving energy, impacting on climate change
A £2 million fund has been set up for schools to carry out energy saving projects. The schools will each directly receive £35,000 (secondary), £10,000 (primary) and £5,000 per special school to invest in projects that will help them to counter rising energy bills.

An extra £1.3 million will be used to fund projects that will have a positive impact on climate change.

A streamlined and efficient local authority

The Council has made savings of almost £19 million, which has made it possible to cope with extra demand in some service areas.

In 2007/2008 the Council will achieve its highest ever council tax collection rate of 96.3% which provides even more money for services.

The Council is committed to developing energy efficient projects and will look at the feasibility of using solar power for street lighting. There will also be further energy cost savings through use of the £812,000 Energy Efficient Fund set up by the Council and a £2 million fund for schools energy saving projects.