At the second time of asking and a fortnight late, Powys County Council has set its budget with a council tax hike of nine-and-a-half per cent.

Since the budget was rejected on 21 February some concessions have been made following discussion between all the group leaders.

These included libraries savings of £200,000 being dropped; a new Community Enablement Fund of £100,000; sports development savings target to be cut by £50,000; school meals to go up by 15p rather than 20p, which will be worth £60,000; and changes funded by not paying £500,000 into council reserves.

There was also one further amendment which was debated in the chamber and passed; to use the remaining £90,000 of the £500,000 on helping organisations that were facing cuts to grant funding.

But there will still be nearly £12m worth of cuts across the council.

Liberal Democrat and Green group leader Cllr James Gibson-Watt thought it was regrettable that councillors had not been given another opportunity to discuss alternatives, such as selling assets to be used as money for “transformation” projects.

He said: “We should not forget how we got here, because next year we can’t come back and say to the people of Powys: ‘Sorry we’ll have to put the council tax again by a record amount, and by the way we’re withdrawing the funding for services’.

“The message has to go out that the services have to live within the money they receive.”

Finance portfolio holder Cllr Aled Davies said: “We are in the hands of Welsh Government to a certain extent, as we don’t know what their level of funding for local authorities will be.

“We hope that we won’t be at the bottom of the pile next year.”

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