Council tax in Rochdale is expected to go up by 4.99 per cent in April. The local authority is due to vote on the budget at the end of next month, an annual requirement for every council.
Tax would need to be raised by 4.99 pc to bring forward a balanced budget for 2026/27, according to recent finance papers. This is a hike the council has consistently brought in over recent years in order to rake in extra cash.
Currently the council is over budget by £656,000, meaning they need to find further savings or dip into their financial reserves to balance the budget.
As things stand, that budget deficit is expected to rise to £4.423m in 2028/29.
It is understood that the council has been able to make savings of just under £1m on staffing, not through redundancies, but by not replacing staff that have left. Cuts in departments have also come through business contracts ending or being renegotiated, finance bosses have explained.
Adult services and children’s services are significantly over budget and seen as the biggest financial burden for the council. This is due to increased costs associated with the rising demand in care homes and the increasing number of children with complex special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) needs.
Local authorities can only generate funding for their revenue budget through council tax, business rates and government grants. A recent government shake up in how council cash is generated is now expected to increase council coffers.
It was initially thought that the fairer funding review, which is supposed to prioritise the most deprived areas, would mean a loss of around £10m for Rochdale in 2026/27. However, through lobbying government and changes to the allocation of grants announced in November, funding for Rochdale is expected to increase recurrently by £12.3m in 2026/27, rising to £19.7m in 2028/29.
Rochdale will also receive an additional £6.5m in one-off smoothing funding in 2026/27.
These numbers could change again once the government’s provisional funding settlement is decided in the coming weeks. Despite this, a large proportion of core spending power (CSP) is expected to come through council tax rises in the next three years.
According to council papers, council tax rises are expected to generate the council an extra £27.8m over the next three years.
Rochdale Town Hall is set to host the council meeting on February 25 where the budget will be officially voted on by councillors.
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