Spending on council services 2022/23
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We will spend £691m on council services in the financial year 2022/23. More than half (61% – £423m) will provide adult social care, children’s services and homelessness. With these budgets we’re investing in our communities and funding essential frontline services for the city’s most vulnerable people.
The next biggest chunk goes on providing services in your neighbourhoods.
Priorities
We will focus on supporting residents out of poverty, clean streets, investment in youth services, green public spaces, and building new homes, so our budget includes:
- Investment in clean streets and neighbourhoods, parks and green spaces, including an extra £700,000 to keep the city clean on top of the existing £55m on waste and recycling collection and street cleaning. We’re creating new green spaces too, such as the £23m Mayfield Park through external funding, and a fund for partnerships for park improvements.
- £34m for community and voluntary organisations to tackle poverty across the city.
- Making sure organisations can afford to pay care workers the Real Living Wage rather than the lower national living wage.
- £3.2m to help people struggling with rent, along with support with food parcels and free school meals.
- Keeping as much of our spending as possible in the city to support our residents. Last year we spent £247million with Manchester-based organisations, creating 2,300 jobs and supporting more than 600 apprenticeships.
Other priorities
We’ve already put £192million (much of this external funding which we have secured for the city) into our zero-carbon ambitions – and we’re working to secure more.
We’re also committed to more new homes in the city and we’re overseeing more than 7,000 new affordable homes being built, including 2,000 socially rented.
We will also use some of our funding to give extra support to these priorities:
- £700,000 in extra targeted support for those most in need – helping fund free school meals over the Easter break.
- £700,000 – including £20,000 for each of the city’s 32 wards – to support high priority improvements.
- £500,000 on top of the £2.74m budget for youth services to provide more play for children and young people, including four new ‘youth hubs’ across the city.
- £800,000 supporting our Climate Change Action Plan.
Budget challenges
Since 2010 we’ve had to make over £420m savings and our spending power reduced by 15% (the average reduction nationally is 2.4%). Last year we had to reduce our budget by £40million.
After more than a decade of cuts our current grant funding is still not enough to cover costs.
Council Tax
We’re managing to avoid service cuts thanks to £7.8m of previously-identified efficiencies and the use of £32m of reserves.
But we must increase Council Tax to help plug the gap – reluctantly proposing an increase of 1.99% for council services and a further 1% earmarked for social care for the most vulnerable in our city. Without this we would have to find £5.7m of cuts to vital services.
Budget breakdown
Our total budget for council services is £691m:
- 61% (£423m) adult social care, children’s services and homelessness.
- 15% (£105m) keeping neighbourhoods clean, green and liveable and keeping local services like parks and libraries running.
- 11% (£79m) services supporting our 7,300 staff to get on with working for the city and help residents – for example through benefits.
- 1% (£7m) growth and development – attracting investment and jobs and getting much-needed homes built.
- 11%, (£78m) transport and essential contingency funding.
With this budget we provide:
- 143 parks
- 22 libraries, attracting 130,000 visitors a month
- 25 leisure centres
- 28million waste collections a year, from 238,000 households
- 2,000 miles of road and pavement maintenance
- 15,600 council homes’ management.
But over half our budget will support our most vulnerable residents, in line with the priorities Manchester people have told us matter most including, last year:
- Care for 4,000 adults, at home and in care homes.
- Care for 1,400 looked-after children.
- Foster homes for 900 more.
- Supporting 12,700 children to get the best start in life in early years settings.
- 2,700 sets of accommodation for homeless people and support to prevent others becoming homeless in the first place.