By Simon Henig, Leader of Durham County Council

AT this time each year, councils across the country are formally agreeing their budgets for the coming 12 months.

For the last few years, Durham County Council’s attention has very much been on how we maintain frontline services in the face of government funding cuts.

We are, therefore, extremely pleased that this year, for this first time in a decade, we are able to plan significant additional investment in key services as part our budget-setting.

Our spending plans and priorities for 2020/21 to 2023/24, which were formally agreed by elected members last week, outline more than £145 million of investments across a wide range of council services.

Over the next two years alone, we’ll be spending an additional £31 million of revenue funding and £1.9 million from our earmarked reserves on repairing roads and potholes, additional climate change initiatives, sprucing up local communities and deploying more neighbourhood wardens to improve community reassurance.

We will also be supporting the most vulnerable in society with investments in children’s and adults’ services and the continuation of our Council Tax Reduction Scheme.

These investments have been made possible thanks to the council’s financial management and robust planning over the past decade despite the challenging financial climate.

We are able to make a significant investment in our capital programme, with additional schemes worth £104 million in 2020/21 and 2021/22 and a planned total capital programme of £444 million over the next four years. A range of new capital schemes are set out in the budget, including significant investment in leisure facilities and schools as well as further capital spending on highways and major transport schemes.

The financial climate remains challenging, with a lack of certainty over future funding from the government making it difficult to plan much further ahead but, hopefully, our communities will welcome the additional investment for the year ahead.