How and where your Council Tax is invested
This year your Council Tax increased by only 1.5 per cent – among the lowest increases in Scotland.
That means a band D Council Tax level of £1,169, which is equal to a rise of 33p a week.
Edinburgh’s Council Tax is lower than Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee and, since 1996, has been the second lowest percentage increase of all 32 Scottish local authorities.
This money helps to invest in quality of life for all of Edinburgh’s residents. This includes more Police on the streets, caring for the most vulnerable, making streets clean and safe, providing great schools, more activities for young people, caring for the environment and repairing roads.
Helping youth
In 2007/08 the Council will help make communities in Edinburgh even safer by investing £2.3 million to take tough and effective action against antisocial behaviour.
[IMG1]
New Youth Action Teams will be created with £500,000 to fund 18 extra officers, taking the total number of additional Police officers to over 100.
£500,000 will be used to support the posts of 18 Police officers in the city centre.
Our cultural city
The Edinburgh International Festival will receive additional funding of £700,000 in total, with £350,000 from the Council and the same amount from a combination of the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Arts Council.
Sporting chance
Local and amateur sports will receive an important boost with £2.5m funding for pitches and pavilions. This will be used to improve sports pitches and pavilions across the city.
Cleaner and safer streets
The Council intends to build on its growing reputation as one of the UK’s cleanest cities.
[IMG2]
£400,000 will be used to increase street cleaning, especially in the summer, improve parks and extend the Barrow Beat service.
Mending local roads and pavements...
£23m will be invested this year (2007/8) to improve the city’s roads and pavements, with a total of £61m to be spent over the next three years. £1.75m will be spent on improving neighbourhood roads and pavements.
Caring for the vulnerable
This budget will provide total extra investment of £10m to support the city’s most vulnerable people from young to old. It is essential that we provide our most vulnerable residents with the care and support they need. This will include an extra £2.4m to help children in care and their families, bringing the total spend to £16m. £3m more will be spent on care at home services, most of which will be spent on older people.
[IMG3]
Saving energy, impacting on climate change...
A £2m fund has been set up for schools to carry out energy saving projects. The schools will each directly receive £35,000 (secondary), £10,000 (primary) and £5,000 per special school to invest in projects that will help them to counter rising energy bills.
Direct debit – you know it makes sense
Direct debit is becoming the main payment method for Council Tax.
As Council Tax makes up a quarter of the Council’s overall budget it is very important to collect as much as we can each year.
The more money we collect, the more there is to improve services and keep the level of Council Tax down. Direct debit has been shown to be the best way to increase collection.
It’s also value for money as it costs just one pence to process a direct debit payment compared to 48p for the payment card.
We currently issue payment cards to 120,000 Council Taxpayers. If we could move 25 per cent of these over to direct debit it would save us well in excess of £100,000.
Payment cards will still be available.