Roads and street lighting in Powys will suffer as a result of cuts, says council
Roads and street lighting will suffer and decline as a result of decades of funding cuts in Powys.
Powys County Council warned last month of a possible 12 per cent tax rise, as well as cuts to a raft of services in the wake of further funding being slashed by the Welsh Government.
The authority has had the poorest funding settlement in Wales for nine out of the past ten years, and was forced to announce last month that 50 jobs will go.
Deputy leader and cabinet member for finance Aled Davies said tax increases won't be enough to prevent cuts in valuable services such as roads and libraries.
He said: "The reality facing the council is that not even a significant increase in the rate of council tax will prevent a number of valued services including libraries, roads and street lighting face reductions.
“While no decisions have yet been made, our ability to reduce spending is severely restricted by the proportion of our budget that is needed to support statutory services such as education and social care.
"These services account for more than 70 per cent of our spending and although they are not exempt from cuts it is inevitable that non-statutory areas will come under the greatest pressure.
“We will have to ask ourselves can we afford the branch libraries we operate, the number of offices and buildings we fund. Will we have to reduce the length of roads we repair, the number of street lights we power and the number of open spaces we maintain.
“As a council we are facing some of the most challenging decisions of our political lives, decisions that I am sure will be unpopular. But, we have to set a balanced budget and the continued reduction in our external funding means we have little choice.
“We have a difficult task ahead of us balancing the level of council tax against the level of service provision. It will not be easy and we hope that residents understand our choices and accept our decision."
Last month, in a warning over the financial position the authority said education could also suffer, and redundancies could be made.
