The Performance Plan 2006

We had to make difficult decisions in the last year to reduce our budgets by £2.6m in response to the Government’s decision to cap our Council Tax. In making those decisions we used the results of the 2005/06 budget consultation when residents identified their priorities, which are set out in order in Table 11.

Table 11 - Public Priorities

The 5 services considered MOST important		The five services considered LEAST important
1	Refuse and recycling	11	Community grants
2	Community safety	12	Regulation and Licensing
3	Street cleaning	13	Sports development and sports facilities
4	Travellers	14	Economic Development and Tourism
5	Food safety, pollution monitoring and pest control	15	Arts development and events

Guided by these consultation results we made greater savings in areas of discretionary spending such as sports and arts development, while protecting spending on statutory services such as refuse collection and the planning service.