Penyard Ward Report February 2025
Council Budget 25/26
Full Council has agreed the budget as set out at its meeting on 7th February 2025 with 1 vote against, no one abstaining, and all others in support. The setting of Council tax, which means the Council tax, Police, Fire and Parish precepts all added up and allotted to each household by Parish, will occur at the Council meeting in March and will become the amount chargeable to all households from April 2025 through to March 2026
Should you be financially constrained by these charges, there is potential support by contacting Herefordshire Council via the website; otherwise, it is the mandatory means for the Council to provide the services that we all have use of.
Should you feel that the Council does nothing for this money other than empty your bins, (a common comment!) then a quick summary headline of expenditure shows spending
- Community and Wellbeing £90m
- Children and Young People £59m
- Economy and Environment £42m
Main income
- Council tax £146m
- Business rates £ 47m
The full revenue budget is £231.5m which covers all other costs and income.
The Capital budget 2025/26 shows £155m of investment.
This includes a doubling of resurfacing roads from last year’s £5m to £10 m in the coming year. This is specifically for resurfacing priority routes that are beyond repair. This is additional to our revenue funding for road maintenance that is carried out by Balfour Beatty Living Places, our Public Realm Contractor.
Hereford & Worcester Fire Authority can now announce that the contract for the new Hereford Fire station has been signed and the contractors, Speller Metcalfe Ltd, who recently built the new Redditch Fire Station, will commence construction, within the next week, of the temporary fire station in Mortimer Road, Hereford. Once the temporary Fire Station is complete, in around June 2025, the current staff and vehicles will move across and demolition of the existing Fire Station in St Owen Street will commence.
The build programme has an overall duration of approximately 85 weeks, and we should see the new Fire Station completed in early 2027. This marks a circa £14m investment by the Fire Authority into Hereford City and will provide a new, modern, and efficient Fire Station for Herefordshire that will complement those new Fire Stations we have built across Worcestershire. The new building will also have accommodation for the district staff and have capacity to be used by all the Service and support recruitment, Prevention and Protection activities.
For those that may not know where Herefordshire Council meet for a full Council meeting of all 53 ward members it takes place in Plough Lane in Conference room 1. The picture alongside is taken from the most recent meeting. The agenda was 350 pages long plus 4 supplementary papers. Meeting agendas can all be found on the Council website under the various committee titles and all meetings are held in public and can be viewed on the Council U-Tube channel. Links to all of this can be found on the website as well. My seat at council is four from the back on the inner row. The microphones at your seat are allocated to you, so, when you speak you appear on the U-Tube recording. Printing paper documents is rare as everything is digital.
As I have been writing this late on Sunday evening, I have had a notification from the Chief Executive to say that Government has announced financial support to 20 Local authorities who are in trouble financially. Shropshire and Worcestershire are amongst them. Herefordshire is not as we have managed to control our budgets to remain balanced. I think this is allowing them to capitalise their overspends, which is frowned upon as it just adds further interest payments to their revenue accounts in future years which adds to their problems of balancing revenue budgets and delivering services.
So much for Devolution that is expected at some point, but any move for a Devolution deal is on hold locally as our near neighbours must go through Local Government reforms to align first. Another thing to watch out for down the road.
Best wishes to all, especially those of you that got this far!
Please feel free to contact me on 07900 918384
Or by email on harry.bramer2@herefordshire.gov.uk
Please pass this on to your Parish Councillors and to any newsletters that may be of interest and please remember that should any Parish Council wish me to attend their meetings at any time – I should be only too pleased to attend if asked.
Regards
Cllr Harry Bramer
Penyard Ward Member
Cabinet Member for Community Services and Assets