Have you ever been in the situation where you are a week away from payday but have run out of money?

It’s a horrible place to be and if you find yourself in this situation then I hope you are able to close the gap.

Sadly, the way that the central government funds local councils means it is very similar to the position Huntingdonshire District Council finds itself in.

Like you, we have faced rising costs and soaring inflation and, like you, we have to live within our means and while we had some savings in the bank, we inherited a plan that spent those because of an £8 million budget hole.

We have worked hard with council officers to make savings and efficiencies, including finding the best savings accounts and investments to put our money into which has made our money stretch as far as possible.

Despite the increases we have faced, we have good news that the council will end the financial year breaking even.

We only found out how much money we would receive from central government three days before Christmas. 

We need to set a budget for the coming years that creates a sustainable financial strategy and we have been working hard to produce this. It has now been formally considered by our cross-party scrutiny committee, the cabinet and will be presented to a meeting of the HDC full council February 22.

The proposed budget for the year ahead is balanced and protects frontline services.

Huntingdonshire Band D Council Tax will, if agreed, go up by £5 or 3.31 per cent a year to £155.86 from April 1, 2023. The rise is less than 10p a week, meaning that the average household will only pay £3 a week for all the services provided by the district council. We have not taken this decision lightly as we know that this impacts on you especially when other parts of the council tax are also increasing.

Moving forward, we must have a sustainable plan that seeks opportunities to transform our services – to work smarter, be greener and use technology better.

One of these transformations is to charge for garden waste collections. This change is not in the budget for the year ahead, which gives us 16 months to work with residents on alternative ways to collect garden waste that doesn’t involve huge trucks driving around.

Not all properties in Huntingdonshire need a garden waste collection as they do not have a garden - so the revised service will only be paid for by those households that choose to use it. Garden waste can also be composted or used for mulch - these approaches are much better for the environment than our current collection methods.

I look forward to continuing to work with all our residents across the district as we develop our ambitious plans for Huntingdonshire – which starts with the Huntingdonshire Futures plan to 2050, the new Climate Strategy and the new Local Plan.