The Council's Revenue Budget

Council tax is your contribution to the services that keep Manchester running -  schools, roads, libraries, waste disposal, as well as the police and fire service. After listening to the views of residents, Manchester City Council agreed its budget and Council Tax on 9 March 2011. The Council Tax level for 2011/12 has been held at the same figure as in 2010/11. Whilst this fits with the Councils' on-going move to try and reduce the burden of its Council Tax on the citizens of Manchester all Council's in England and Wales have frozen their Council Tax in 2011/12 as the Government Grant Settlement for this year made provision to recompense Council's who froze their Council tax at 2010/11 levels.

The budget sets out how the Council will make £109 million of savings over the next financial year, rising to £170m in 2012/13.

Although the Council anticipated a reduction in central funding and had planned to make substantial savings, after the Government's financial settlement it became clear that £60 million more savings would have to be found next year.

Overall the savings which need to be made over the next two years represent 25% of the Council's budget.

While the council has already made substantial efficiency savings over the last two years - and was planning to make £96m savings between 2010 and 2013 - the scale and speed of savings required means they can no longer be achieved through efficiencies alone.

The budget was agreed at Council on the 9 March based on the recommendation of the Executive who considered a range of reports at its meeting on February 16. The Executive considered two reports which identified; the overall impact of the Government's funding cut backs on the Council; a Medium Term Financial Plan for 2011/12 and 2012/13 that identified how the Council proposed to deal with the funding reductions and other financial pressures facing it. In addition they also considered 4 reports, one from each of the four directorates which discussed in more detail the proposals for their services. All these reports can be viewed by following the links below.