Carmarthenshire Council has approved a budget which was looking “very grim” just a couple of months ago, according to a cabinet member.
Council tax-payers will pay 4.9% more in 2026-27 than they do currently but it’s less than the 6.5% increase that the Plaid Cymru-Independent-led council had initially forecast.
Cllr Alun Lenny, Plaid cabinet member for finance, told a meeting of full council: “While this remains higher than we’d like it reflects the ongoing pressures faced by councils across Wales, including rising demand for services, coupled with persistent financial challenges.”
Most of the council’s funding for its revenue, or day-to-day, budget comes from the Welsh Government and Carmarthenshire will end up getting a 4.1% rise rather than the 2.3% increase earmarked a few weeks ago.
Cllr Lenny said this was due to Plaid abstaining at a key budget vote in the Senedd on the condition that an extra £300m should be provided to the Welsh NHS and the country’s 22 local authorities.
“When we prepared out draft budget towards the end of last year the position looked very grim,” he said, referring to the initial modelling.
Labour opposition leader Cllr Deryk Cundy acknowledged the financial pressures facing the council but said his group could not support the budget because it would leave the authority exposed next year. He said wide-ranging measures to build in savings had to be made.
The budget that went on to be approved in a majority vote will, give or take a few adjustments, essentially mean £541.5m being spent on schools, social care, waste collection, and highways and transport among other things.
This will be paid for with a £333.9m Welsh Government grant, £141.4m from council tax-payers, and a £66.2m share of business rates.
The council will actually spend a lot more money than £541.5m but it’s offset by income from fees and charges and various individual grants.
Despite the better than expected outcome savings of £8.7m will need to be made in 2026-27 and there is concern about overspending by several schools and by some council departments. This, said Cllr Lenny, continued “to place significant strain” on the budget.
Some savings proposals were shelved following a public consultation which more than 1,200 people responded to. There were also some new spending measures such as extra funding for road maintenance and youth services.
Labour’s Cllr Cundy said he recognised a rising need for council services, increasingly complex households, escalating maintenance costs, and workforce pressures.
He said teachers nowadays were expected to act as carers, administrators, and provide social support without the back-up they needed.
While welcoming the extra funding from the Welsh Government he said the council needed a “systems transformation”, with help from artificial intelligence, to build in savings. “It’s not a failure of people, it’s a failure of design and it can be changed,” he said.
The council, he said, needed to do things differently rather than surviving the year and hoping things would get better.
Cllr Lenny said the administration had been consulting opposition Labour members as part of the budget preparation process and that many of their points were being addressed. He also said the administration had hoped for better things when Labour won the 2024 general election.
The 4.9% council tax rise will mean Band D households paying £1,830.97 but this doesn’t include the Dyfed-Powys Police precept. Council tax in Carmarthenshire rose by 8.9% in April last year.
