Choices & Challenges: Budget Consultation 2018

We ran a survey, between 15th October 2018 and 12th November 2018, to ask you for your opinions on potential budget cuts and savings. The survey received 2028 responses and the results were used to inform decisions made about the Council’s spending for 2019/20 and beyond.

• 42% of respondents thought Council Tax should be increased by the maximum 3%; 27% thought it should be increased by less than 3%; and 31% thought there should be no increase at all;
• 74% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that schools should be merged;
• 37% respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they would be prepared to pay new or increased charges to maintain and protect the provision of music tuition. 46% said no changes should be made to music tuition.;
• 35% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they would be prepared to pay new or increased charges to maintain and protect pest control. 46% said no changes should be made to pest control and 39% said it should be reduced;
• 36% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they would be prepared to pay new or increased charges to maintain and protect special uplifts. 47% said no changes should be made to special uplifts and 40% said the service should be reduced;
• 50% of respondents wanted bus subsidy funding to be protected; 33% thought it should be reduced and just 12% thought funding should be removed completely;
• 40% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they would be prepared to pay new or increased charges to maintain and protect burials and cremations;
• 35% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they would be prepared to pay new or increased charges to maintain and protect garden waste collections. 54% said no changes should be made to garden waste collections and 38% said the service should be reduced.

• For 2019/20, we will raise Council Tax will by 3%.
• We will review schools with less than 10 catchment pupils on school roll;
• There will be a reduction in staffing and the number of instrument tuition choices available;
• We still stop providing pest control services. We will direct service users to use private companies;
• We will end the current service arrangement of one free uplift. Service reverts to chargeable service for all uplifts based on fees and charges policy;
• We will reduce the expenditure on subsidised bus services in 2019/20. The savings would be delivered by a reduction of £352,000 on local bus service contracts, including those supplying Local School Bus Services to Children's Services, and would involve reducing service frequencies and/or days of operation. This might result in withdrawal of all bus subsidies;
• As part of the Services for the Bereaved project, burial fees have been increased by around 12-13% to align Falkirk to the Scottish average and an inflationary increase of 3% applied to cremation charges;
• Brown bin collections will reverts back to original collection frequency of 4 weekly and on demand in the winter months.