A MAJORITY of councillors have voted in favour of spending £524.6m on key services in Carmarthenshire next year, increasing council tax by 8.9% and making savings of £8.1m.

It’s a rise in expenditure of nearly £35m compared to the current financial year with all departments getting more money.

The Plaid-Independent administration had been proposing a 9.75% council tax rise but this was trimmed to 8.9% when councillors met on February 26 to set a balanced budget.

Labour opposition councillors accused the administration of failing to curb overspending by schools resulting in what they said was a 3.5% higher council tax rise than would otherwise have been the case.

Plaid councillors agreed the council tax rise could have been 3.5% lower but said it was due to increases in employer national insurance contributions brought in by the UK Labour Government which the authority would have to cover.

The council is getting £25m more from central government to fund its revenue budget than this financial year – a 4.1% increase – but rising costs and demand for key services like adult social care has required a council tax hike, savings, and increases in certain charges.

Introducing the proposals Plaid cabinet member for resources, Cllr Alun Lenny, said the extra £25m fell well short of what was needed to maintain services at an “acceptable level”. He said: “Although siren voices call for no cuts and a council tax freeze I must remind everyone that we have to set a legal budget.”

Cllr Lenny added that unpopular proposals for a 10% rise in council car park charges and the closure of public toilets if they couldn’t be transferred to other groups had been shelved following public consultation.

Cllr Linda Evans, deputy council leader, said the authority had been forced to make cuts every year bar one since 2008 when she was first elected due to what she said was under-investment by central government. “None of us want to see cuts, none of us want to raise council tax, but we have to. We have no choice,” she said.

Cllr Kevin Madge led Labour’s riposte, saying the council would be in a worse position had Labour not won last year’s general election and increased its funding for the Welsh Government, which in turn funds councils.

Cllr Madge branded overspending by schools in Carmarthenshire “unacceptable” and said the administration had failed to stop it for years. This was unfair on schools which balanced their books, he said, and on residents as council tax would be 3.5% higher next year in order to protect school budgets.

Labour colleague Cllr Martyn Palfreman said the proposed 8.9% council tax rise was still “eyewatering”, despite coming down from 9.75%, and that his party would take “bold steps” to transform council services and achieve better outcomes which cost less if it was in charge.

Cllr Alex Evans, of Plaid, said Labour should have approached the administration with its “bold ideas” and that , in his view, the only real change at a national level since last year’s general election was a negative one.

That drew a response from Cllr Michael Thomas, of Labour, who said it was all too easy to blame external factors. He accused Plaid of deflecting, prevaricating, and of mismanaging school budgets. He said educating children at small schools was more expensive than larger ones and that 14 out of 17 schools with fewer than 50 pupils were in Plaid wards. Cllr Thomas said the administration’s budget proposals stemmed from “the fear of making unpopular decisions in Plaid wards”.

Labour leader,Cllr Deryk Cundy said his party hadn’t had a chance to submit alternative budget proposals to the ruling coalition. He recommended more use of artificial intelligence by the council and more effective procurement on projects such as new schools, citing the fact that only one company had come forward with a price for a new Ysgol Heol Goffa, Llanelli.

Plaid cabinet member for regeneration, Cllr Hazel Evans, said Labour’s employer national insurance hikes would undermine growth and the planned council tax rise would be 5.4% without them. This, she said, was because the authority would have to pick up the national insurance bill for services it commissioned from the private sector.

Cllr Gareth John, also Plaid, said he’d hoped there would have been a consensus in recognition of “the dire financial outlook facing local government as a whole”. Instead, he said, the opposition did what it always did and blamed the administration. Cllr John said the Welsh Local Government Association, which represents the country’s 22 councils, had “made it perfectly clear” to the Welsh Government that councils needed an extra 7.5% of funding in 2025-26 just to stand still, which put Carmarthenshire’s 4.1% uplift into perspective.

Council leader, Cllr Darren Price, said the gap between what local authorities needed and what they received had very real impacts. “There is an £18m gap which we have to fill either by cutting services, increasing council tax, or a combination of both,” he said. Not increasing council tax, he said, would require £8.5m of cuts on top of the £8.1m that were already proposed.

The Plaid leader said Labour was not happy with increasing council tax or making savings and asked what they’d do. “It’s very fundamental, it’s very basic, and you have zero answers,” he said. “And that’s where my frustration will start to kick in.”

Cllr Price also accused Cllr Cundy of lying about not having an opportunity to put forward options saying there had been meetings for example last July, December, and also last Friday when this could have happened. He also said the opposition could have tabled an amendment at the budget meeting with alternative proposals.

Cllr Cundy said there had been meetings but they weren’t really to discuss policy and that Labour had tried to suggest ideas at meetings with other cabinet members and with council officers.

The council tax rise will come into force in April and mean band D households paying £1,745,43, excluding the Dyfed-Powys Police precept and any community council charge.

By Richard Yule, Local Democracy Reporter