FAQs

Our General Fund money comes from Council Tax, Business Rates, funds from fees and charges, and government grants.

Each year the government gives us money to help cover the cost of services. The amount is decided in December, shortly after we have announced our own budget proposals.  

This amount of money is based on an expected council tax rise which is 4.99% this year.

The proportion of our budget which is made up from general government funding has reduced over the past 14 years. During the same period, the money we receive from Council Tax has become more important.

The level of rates businesses pay is set by government. Many small businesses do not pay Business Rates.

We also apply for grants for special projects from Government, like our Ambition for North Shields or the sea front sustainable transport route.  

Some services are self-funded, such as Council Housing which relies on the rents and charges it collects to pay for any outgoings. 

It’s spent on hundreds of different services to the residents of the borough not just services you receive personally.

Council tax is our main source of income and since 2014/15 the proportion of our funding that comes directly from council tax has gone from 44% to 64% as government funding to councils has decreased.

By far the biggest proportion of our budget is spent on social care, supporting the most vulnerable residents in North Tyneside.  It also goes towards waste collections, recycling, highway maintenance, leisure, libraries and many more services that residents use every day.  

Our overall budget has reduced significantly over the past 14 years, due to falling government grants, the impact of inflation and increased demand for our services. Over that period, we have lost in excess of £470m of central Government funding. Increases in Council Tax do not fully address this shortfall. 

The demand for services, especially social care for adults and children is increasing. 

The cost of providing social care is increasing and we sometimes use expensive private services that we cannot deliver in house to care for our residents.

To help make savings the Council has started 14 transformation projects that will make services better value for money, whilst still being the quality our residents would expect. 

This approach has already saved 10 million pounds. 

The money will go into the General Fund.

We must look at other ways of creating income and making savings so that we can protect essential frontline services for those residents most in need.

Collecting garden waste isn’t an essential service that councils must provide, most English councils already charge for this service and many have been doing so for several years. 

We are the last Council in the North East to introduce the charge and we are the cheapest. 

You will only pay for the service if you opt in. 

Councils hold financial reserves so they can plan for the future. Reserves are split in three: 

• Earmarked for know risks such as insurance
• Ringfenced for a specific purpose
• Allocated for emergencies

They are not to cover day to day spending and can only be spent once.

Sometimes Council funding or funding from external partners has to be spent on certain things. 

For example, a Government Active Travel grant must be spent on sustainable travel - like a cycleway - and cannot be used for road repairs or other Council services. 

Council budgets include capital spending and revenue spending. These are different pots of money and by law, councils cannot use capital funding for revenue spending. 

This can be explained in household terms to make them simpler to understand.   

Capital spending is one-off spending on things such as new buildings, machinery, equipment and even roads – in household terms it’s like buying a house. 

Revenue spending is the cost of running our day-to-day services – to continue the household example this would be grocery shopping, energy bills and monthly mortgage or rent. 

These are small ‘precepts’ or charges help towards these services locally but does not mean we have control over what service it is spent on.  It gives a seat at the table of our partners so we can work together for the benefit of residents in North Tyneside.

The Education Act 1988 established a system of individual school budgets, with local accountability for such expenditure resting on school governing bodies.

One of the 14 transformation projects mentioned earlier is looking at the Council’s workforce and the design of the Council. The aim is to reduce our workforce by 5%, we have around 4000 colleagues so 5% is around 200 people. 

The first stage of this is a Voluntary Redundancy programme, where people can come forward if they’d like to leave their role, this job is then removed from the Council structure to save money. 

Voluntary Redundancy can be a positive opportunity for people, it may mean they can move onto something different or retire earlier. Alongside this programme the Council is offering flexible retirement plans and allowing people to change their working hours if it helps save money. 

Some critical roles are protected from Voluntary Redundancy, especially in areas of the Council where we need important front-line teams. 

Following the Voluntary Redundancy process the council will look at its overall structure. 

There are currently 101,980 domestic properties in North Tyneside. 50, 582 of these properties have a Band A Council Tax attributed to them. 

A 4.99% increase on one Band A property would equate to an additional £64.65 per year.

The same increase on a Band D property equates to £96.98

For a single household the increases equate to £48.49 per year for Band A and £72.74 for Band D.