A near five per cent rise in council tax agreed by councillors. 

A 4.84 per cent rise was agreed by councillors today [Thursday] after an attempt to reduce it to a three per cent.

The Labour administration proposed amending the budget to remove the review of primary and secondary school staffing saving options of £850,000, reduce resources allocated via the Devolved School Management Scheme by £750,000, reduce infrastructure fund by £186,000 from £2.786m to £2.6m and establish a Drug Emergency Fund of £86,000 

The SNP proposed to merge plans for separate climate, infrastructure and community wealth funds into a single investment fund, allocate £500,000 towards tree planting for carbon obsorbtion to become net zero and spend £250,000 on actions to for asset-based community economic development to support community asset transfer and other related activity with community organisations to sustain services locally by community groups. 

While the Conservatives attempted to limit the council tax rise to three per cent and reduce the climate fund by 1.072m from £5m to £3,928m.

During an interval, the Labour and SNP groups agreed to merge their changes to the budget, which was approved by councillors after a vote.

Council fees and charges will increase by five per cent with effect from April 1 with the annual rise approved in the 2019/20 Budget.

New savings include only cutting grass verges on rural roads once a year instead of twice to save £10,000 – which has been deemed low risk as it would increase biodiversity.

A number of funeral services would see a 10 per cent rise in cost with burials going up from £733 to £806 and the cost of a lair rising from £859 up from £781.

A total of 85 new jobs will be created in early years, care at home services and community wealth building – with council chiefs previously saying there would be no compulsory redundancies.

Chief Executive Craig Hatton said earlier this week: “All budgets are very challenging, we set out and delivered £102million of savings in the past 10 years, it’s getting more and more difficult with the background of demographic pressures – deprivation, poverty and inequalities that exist in North Ayrshire, so it is very challenging. 

“However we draw together good medium and long term plans on what our future challenges are financially.” 

The new rate will see Band A council tax go up by £41.32 to £895.12 annually, Band B rising by £48.21 to £1,044.31, C rising by £55.09 to £1,193.49, D £61.99 to £1,342.69, E £81.45 to £1,764.14, F going up by £100.73 to £2,181.86, G £121.38 to £2,629.42 and those in Band H paying an extra £151.87 to £3,289.58.

This would raise around £58,827,000 for North Ayrshire Council