Bury council tax to rise by five per cent amid ‘challenging’ budget with £5m of cuts

Council tax payers in Bury will pay five per cent more from April after the council set their budget for the upcoming year. The council said it needs to make £30m of savings over the next three years to balance the books, with £15m in next 12 months.

The council has agreed to fund the gap for 2024/25 by making £5.4m of cuts and the remaining gap will be plugged by using around £10M of the council’s cash reserves. Shortly after the start of the meeting several people sitting in the public gallery at Bury Town Hall’s council chamber began loudly shouting and chanting in support of a ceasefire in Gaza.

The meeting was interrupted for around two minutes as they were ushered away from the upstairs area. Seconding the Labour controlled council’s budget, council leader Eamonn O’Brien, said: “Politics fundamentally comes down to choices.

“At budget time the spotlight of choices is at its brightest. Do we raise taxes or do we cut services further?

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“Do we protect services for as long as we can or do protect our reserves? Do we pay our key workers, carers, cleaner, caterers a fair living wage or do we leave them in poverty pay?

“Do we invest in our future or do we manage decline? All of those choices face us tonight and they’ve become harder and harder, year after year because of a funding system which is unfair.

“Local government funding is broken.” Conservative leader Russell Bernstein proposed a budget amendment which would include no increase in council tax bills in 2024/25. He said the measure would be financed by not implementing a rise in the living wage to around 5,000 of the council’s lowest paid employees, which is set to cost £6.6M.

He said: “Our proposals are based on