Published: Thursday 7 March 2019
7 March 2019
The Kensington and Chelsea Council section of your council tax bill will increase by 2.99 per cent from 1 April 2019.
In addition, a further two per cent will be added to help fund adult social care in the borough.
This means that the annual bill from the council for a Band D property will rise to £870.04, an increase of £3.43 per month.
Those properties that pay additional fees for garden squares will see our section of their council tax bill rise from £845.18 to £887.34.
Following the annual budget debate and vote in the chamber at Kensington Town Hall on 6 March, the council agreed a raft of spending on key service for the months ahead.
A total of £473m will be spent on core services for 160,000 residents and 250,000 daily visitors.
Additionally, the Council will invest £270m in the borough’s infrastructure from 2018/19 to 2021/22, including £37m on the new Barlby and Special Educational Needs school.
The Council has committed to paying the London Living Wage on all new and renewed contracts, and it has made a commitment to fund the Grenfell Recovery Strategy with £50m over the next five years.
£12m will be invested in our 33 schools, teaching 13,000 children, including extra support for 604 children who have Education, Health and Care Plans and for 160 who need transport.
In addition, £69m will be spent on children and family services to support our most vulnerable young people, including over 90 looked after children, 180 young adults leaving care, and targeting early intervention to help more than 550 children.
With an ageing population, the Council has earmarked £72m to support more than 600 people to live at home by providing, care, day activities and transport provision to access these facilities. We will also be supporting 400 people in residential and nursing provision.
Over the next three years we will be investing £6m in day centres and investing £2m in technology to aid independence and personalisation of care.
We will spend £43m on your waste services, continuing to collect waste twice weekly from 93,000 households, and £5m on making sure your 26 parks and open spaces are kept to the highest possible standards.
In planning, we advise on approximately 5,500 planning applications each year and next year the department will spend £12.2m to support this but generate income of around £5m.
On our roads, we will spend £28m maintaining nearly 190km of highway and 376km of pavements, and over the next three years we will invest £5.5m in improvements to our infrastructure.
We will spend £31m on step free access initiatives at underground stations by 2021/22, and an additional £4.5m will be spent on a footbridge link between North Kensington and White City.
The Council has already announced plans to develop over 600 new homes, and we are supporting over 2,000 households in temporary accommodation.
Finally, tackling crime. We will spend almost £5m on supporting the police in a range of community safety projects, and invest £500k in CCTV.
All of these services will be mainly funded through a mix of council tax, business rates and income from fees and charges which will be the main three sources next year rather than Government grant – £65m retained business rates, £86m from council tax and £126m from fees, charges, rental and other customer income.
We collect council tax from 88,000 households and business rates from 9,000 properties.