{"id":790469,"date":"2026-02-26T14:57:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T14:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/790469\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T14:57:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T14:57:15","slug":"council-tax-to-rise-as-budget-plans-approved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/790469\/","title":{"rendered":"Council tax to rise as budget plans approved"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Don Mort<\/strong>, local democracy reporter<\/p>\n

Council tax will rise by almost five per cent after budget plans for the next financial year were approved.<\/p>\n

Leeds City Council said there would be more cash for community services as its plans for 2026\/27 were voted through.<\/p>\n

Measures to save \u00a346.6m next year were set out in a debate at Leeds Civic Hall.<\/p>\n

Councillors were told that despite the required savings, some \u00a371.1m in extra cash had been made available for the city.<\/p>\n

Labour council leader James Lewis said the financial situation had improved since the Conservatives\u00a0were in power.<\/p>\n

Action to tackle potholes and fly-tipping\u00a0were among planned improvements.<\/p>\n

Coun Lewis said: \u201cThese are fully-funded frontline interventions which which would not be possible under Conservative austerity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Council tax will increase by 4.99 per cent, of which two per cent would be used to fund adult social care.<\/p>\n

An additional \u00a354.6m had been committed to fund care services for people of all ages.<\/p>\n

Coun Lewis said: \u201cThis will help us meet rising demand and cost pressures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some 64 amendments to the budget plans were tabled by the city\u2019s opposition groups, but defeated by the Labour majority.<\/p>\n

The Liberal Democrats wanted to end a \u201cbunker mentality\u201d at the council and make services more accountable.<\/p>\n

Among their alternative budget proposals was putting \u00a32.4m towards making public parks more accessible.<\/p>\n

Group leader Stewart Golton said: \u201cOf course to get to their local park, disabled people need to be able to leave their house to get there, but too often that path is literally blocked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some amendments called for the scrapping of\u00a0parking charges in town centres and beauty spots.<\/p>\n

Conservative group leader Alan Lamb said businesses had been hit by the charges.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThat is how you drain life from a town centre. This policy was not a financial necessity. It was a political choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Labour\u2019s budget plans were approved following the five-hour debate on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Job losses, parking charges and building sales were previously announced as the council faced required savings of more than \u00a3100m in the current financial year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Don Mort, local democracy reporter Council tax will rise by almost five per cent after budget plans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8814],"tags":[748,214244,393,4884,1860,11743,16,15,207658],"class_list":{"0":"post-790469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leeds","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-don-mort","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-leeds","13":"tag-leeds-city-council","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wld-cutswatch"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116137521814661594","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}