Workington Town Council tussle over budget amid council tax rise

Town councillors met last Wednesday, February 1 to approve a budget for the upcoming financial year.

But at the meeting, an alternative budget was proposed by Conservative councillor Jacqueline Kirkbride to cut some budgets within the council, in order to try and prevent a rise in council tax.

Labour accused the Conservatives of proposing a 'wrecking amendment'.

However, Cllr Kirkbride has said she believes there could have been some 'compromises' within the budget, including a £5,000 office expenses amount.

Labour councillor Michael Heaslip said: "Workington Town Council adopted the Labour recommended budget for 2023-24 on February 1 which will mean a 3.1 per cent increase in Workington’s share of council tax.

"That's 4p a week for a Band A household, which is the vast majority of households in Workington. And thanks to the revised council tax reduction scheme introduced by the new Labour Cumberland Council, many of them will get a discount on that.

Cllr Mike Heaslip

"The Tories put forward a wrecking amendment, which contained some bizarre proposals: they proposed to cut the budget for telecoms and insurance below the contracted prices – were they going to not pay the bills?

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"They also wanted to cut the budgets for streetlighting and bus shelters, and halve the allotments budget so that allotments would be run at a 50 per cent profit!

"And remove the budget for town twinning, just as it's getting going again after Covid, with exchanges planned for students and athletes.

"The budget that covers Remembrance Day was to take a cut too, but daftest of all was the proposal to cut the budget for office supplies – which includes cleaning materials and loo rolls."

The alternative budget was proposed by Conservative town councillor Jacqueline Kirkbride. She said: "We are in a cost-of-living crisis and I think at a time when everybody is having to cut their budgets and think about what they are spending, I think it's important that the town council considers its budgets and cuts them accordingly.

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"When they say I wanted to cut the budget for toilet roll, in the budget there is an 'office general' [section] which has a budget of about £5,000 which we haven't really touched this year.

"There is a lot of things like that we haven't touched this year. If there was an eventuality where there was some sort of disaster we could have moved money from reserves rather than taking it from the council taxpayer."

Councillor Kirkbride said that she asked what classed as 'office expenses' that didn't come under budgets for things like IT, telecomms, stationary and other expenses.

She said: "If it's things like toilet roll, who on earth is spending £5,000 for toilet roll? That's just ridiculous.

Cllr Jacqueline Kirkbride (Image: Supplied)

"I think my main issue is that we could have negotiated and compromised on a lot of those budget lines so we didn't need to increase it.

"There is a lot of things that are done cross party and budgets should be one of them.

"We should be able to work together to find a compromise for the benefit of the townsfolk."