The Council and democracy The draft budget proposals 2017-20

Christmas, markets and neighbourhoods

  1. Completely review all spending and income related to Christmas including festive lights and Santa, saving £60,000 a year.
  2. Review how Harpurhey and Wythenshawe markets are run, saving £150,000 in 2017/18. We are reviewing these markets to make sure the Council isn't subsidising businesses. We will continue to review the options available.

What people said when we asked about this between 3 November and 15 December 2016

People said:

We considered twelve options covering different services from the animal welfare service to work clubs. Strongest agreement was for the option to reduce Christmas lights and celebrations, with sixty-three percent agreeing. Disagreement was highest with options to reduce help finding work and training. Also less popular was reducing staff costs for community safety and dealing with things like noise nuisance and flytipping.  Twenty percent said these reductions would reduce quality of life and have a long-term impact on communities. A further sixteen percent said more people in their community would be dissatisfied.

We said: following consultation we have changed the way we propose to make savings on festive lights and Santa and instead intend to review Christmas-related activities as a whole including the income we raise and exploring how to raise funds in other ways.

 

 

 

We will not go ahead with options to:

  • reduce events funding by £100,000 a year
  • reduce the neighbourhood investment fund saving £320k a year
  • reduce work and skills projects saving £339k a year
  • review management arrangements in the neighbourhoods service saving £90k
  • reduce costs of staff dealing with community safety saving £236k
  • reduce neighbourhoods staff costs saving £474k
  • reduce work and skills staff saving £301k
  • reduce support of city’s partners saving £26k
  • review animal welfare service saving £50k

Consultation on our proposed budget closed on 10 February 2017. We listened hard and considered all responses before finally setting our budget at our council meeting on 3 March.

Thanks to the thousands who joined the conversation.

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