COUNCIL tax will go up again in Swansea as part of measures to pump £51 million more into day-to-day services than currently.
People in the county will pay an extra 5.95%, taking a band D bill from £1,641.95p to £1,739.61p. It’s one of the lower rises among Wales’s 22 local authorities – neighbouring Carmarthenshire’s is going up by 8.9% – but the £1,739.61 figure doesn’t include the South Wales Police precept, which is increasing by 7.37%.
The council’s three main frontline services – schools, social services, and environment, roads and waste collection – will receive inflation-busting budget rises to deal with pressures including demand for services and pay inflation.
The revenue budget for 2025-26 was approved at a meeting of full council although most opposition councillors abstained and some voted against it.
Day-to-day expenditure on services will be £584.3 million, according to the report before councillors, compared to £533.5 million currently. It equates to around £5,400 per household in Swansea.
The report said schools will get £213.6 million, plus a continuation of a one-off sum of £11.5 million, while £196 million will be allocated to social services. The the environment, roads and waste collection – known as the place department – will receive £98.4 million.
Labour councillors swung behind their leader, Cllr Stewart, who said the £196 million for social services in 2025-26 was an increase of almost 15% compared to this year. “That money is absolutely needed as pressures on the front door have increased by 20%,” he said.
Waste and cleansing collection teams are to be increased and vehicles used throughout the day, he said, to help meet an ambition that household waste should always be collected on the correct day.
An above-inflation increase in Welsh Government funding of £379.2 million – up from £346.7 million currently – will do much of the heavy lifting. The other key contributors will be council tax – at £165.3 million – and an £89 million share of business rates. However, savings of £18.4 million will be needed through a combination of raising fees and making cuts. Around 11 full-time equivalent posts at the council are at risk.
Cllr Stewart pledged £2 million to upgrade sports changing rooms over the next two years to reflect the rise in participation by women and girls. He added that long-awaited work to build new skate and bike parks would start later this year, costing £2.6 million, although the list of locations is still being finalised.
During the debate the Liberal Democrat opposition group put forward an amendment to reduce the planned 5.95% council tax rise to 3.95% using money from a pot of money called the capital equalisation reserve.
Lib Dem leader Cllr Chris Holley said the investment pledges by Cllr Stewart made it sound like “we’re living in a utopia, in a land of milk and honey”. Cllr Holley said residents were facing a “perfect storm” of price increases, including water bill hikes of around 25%.
Addressing Cllr Stewart, he said: “What I’m asking you to do today is to give the people of Swansea a break.”
The Swansea Labour leader, who criticised the former Lib Dem administration led by Cllr Holley for their 0% council tax rise a couple of months before the 2012 council elections, said he felt the amendment was “ill thought-out” because a bigger council tax increase would be needed next year to make up for it. The alternative, he said, was more cuts to services. The amendment was defeated in a vote.
Cllr Stewart said the Lib Dems’ council tax freeze “gimmick” of 13 years ago had taken money out of the council’s base budget every year since. He calculated the total loss at £73 million.
Lib Dem councillor Peter Black said Labour opposition councillors of the time hadn’t voted against it, while Conservative councillor Will Thomas said the 2012 council tax freeze had put more money into the pockets of residents every year since.
Cllr Holley also said the current Labour administration had taken around £30 million out of the revenue budget and put it into the capital equalisation reserve to help fund borrowing costs for major projects.
Another opposition party, the Uplands Party, put forward a two-pronged amendment to scrap a planned £250,000 domiciliary care saving by increasing carer case loads by 3%. Uplands Party councillor Stuart Rice said he felt the proposed saving would result in “people who worked extremely hard” having to work harder and potentially spending less time with clients they looked after. “This is not a good idea,” he said.
The amendment also sought a £100,000 investment in fly-tipping enforcement. Uplands Party leader, Cllr Peter May, said staff who cleared up fly-tipped mess deserved a medal but that it felt like “their work is in vain” due to a lack of deterrent. “We’ve got cases locally going on for 18 months without resolution,” he said.
The Uplands Party said the £350,000 amendment could be funded by reducing expenditure on council vehicle rental hire. It has emerged that the council has 244 rental vehicles on “spot hire” for more than a month. This arrangement cost £1.78 million in 2023-24 and is expected to cost £2.14 million in 2024-25.
Cllr Stewart said “spot hire” was a flexible rental system which helped when other council vehicles were off the road, for example, and that without it there would be “significant frontline disruption”.
Referring to the call for more fly-tipping enforcement, Cllr Stewart said it was “well-intentioned” but that enforcement did take place and that officers tried to identify perpetrators. “The advice I’ve had is that it (£100,000 extra on enforcement) would not make any difference,” he said.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service has previously asked if the planned £250,000 saving on domiciliary care would mean carers doing more home visits on their rounds. Cllr Stewart said this would be the case but that it would be achieved by remodelling current approaches, such as revising the rounds to make them more efficient, without actually reducing the care people received.
The 5.95% council tax rise comes into effect on April 1. Swansea Labour said it would have been 0.75% lower had it not been for a 7.5% hike in the Mid and West Wales Fire Service levy, which the council didn’t set but has to fund.
