Walsall’s budget approved by cabinet - including a 4.99 percent council tax increase
The 2025/26 budget for Walsall Council was approved by cabinet members on Wednesday February 12, including a near-five per cent increase on council tax.
Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
The final draft budget will now come before full council on February 26 for formal approval for the coming year.
Several cost saving measures were proposed to balance the books for 2025/26, some of which sparked criticism.
The relocation of Walsall’s Leather Museum, creating a saving of £190,000, and further rewilding, saving £50,000, have both been removed from the 2025/26 budget following backlash.
Walsall households can expect a 4.99 percent increase in council tax for the coming year, with two percent of the increase ring-fenced to pay for rising adult social care costs.
Households in Band D, the average council tax band, will be paying £2,498.27 per year.
While the council has achieved a balanced budget for this coming year, the portfolio holder for finance, councillor Mark Statham, said the council has a predicted shortfall of £11.9million over the following three years.
He said: “Walsall Council has a track record of strong financial management, but it is not sustainable for us to keep raising council tax and using our reserves to balance the budget.
“This is a national crisis that this council can’t solve on its own.
“What is needed is a fair, multi-year government settlement, which provides ongoing funding for adults and children’s social care in particular.”
Walsall Council spends two thirds of its gross expenditure budget, £563 million, every year on children’s services and adult social care and demand is growing.
Leader of Walsall Council, councillor Garry Parry, added: “You will hear a lot from councils up and down this country in relation to the difficulties they have in setting a balanced budget.
“Their pressures will be similar, in the main, to ours. Adult social care reforms have yet again been kicked into the log grass without any focus on what reform is required.”
Portfolio holder of regeneration, councillor Andrew, shared the same concerns: “This government doesn’t like local government, and the previous government didn’t like local government.
“But if this government is serious in what it wants to achieve with this word ‘growth’, who do they think will deliver that growth?
“It’s going to be local government. The planners, the highways officers, housing, the people doing the job day-in-day-out to deliver for the residents that we represent.”
