GWYNEDD councillors have approved the authority’s budget for the next two years, which includes £5m worth of cuts.

At a meeting of the full council held today, 3 March, Gwynedd councillors approved recommendations from the Cabinet which aims to deliver over £14 million of additional savings over the next two years.

The remaining gap will be bridged through a combination of a council tax increase of 3.97 per cent and a programme of service cuts totalling £4.94m.

Gwynedd Council say they are facing a major funding shortfall due to continuing cuts to their funding from central government.

The 3.97 per cent council tax increase will mean that a household in the Band D Council Tax bracket with see their bill for the coming year increasing by £3.84 a month or £46.09 a year.

Gwynedd Council leader Cllr Dyfed Edwards said: “None of us became councillors so that we could cut public services or increase Council Tax. However the government’s austerity agenda means that local councils like Gwynedd now have no option but to resort to these unpalatable measures simply to meet our legal obligation to balance the books."

“Where we have no option but to consider cuts, we have listened carefully to what local people told us during the recent Gwynedd Challenge consultation. As a result, the vast majority of the service cuts that we must now implement match the cut options that received the least support from local people in the consultation.

“In addition, a number of services have been withdrawn from the list of cuts due to their importance to a specific key sector or to a certain area of the county. Other options have been removed from the cuts list by councillors or amended, for example to protect vulnerable groups such as disabled children.

“Finally, the full council decided that a small number of cuts should not be implemented immediately to allow more time for new options to be considered to sustain some services in the future.”

See next week’s north editions for the full story