BASILDON residents are expected to see an increase in their council tax as millions of pounds will be cut from a council’s funding.

Basildon Council will lose 24.6 per cent of central Government funding after secretary for communities, Sajid Javid released the provisional local government finance settlement.

Based on the council’s 2016 to 2017 budget of £11.9million, the borough will lose £2.9million in Government funding.

Gavin Callaghan, chair of the council’s policy and resources committee, said that residents in the borough could see their taxes rise up to about three per cent to mitigate the loss of funding.

He said: “The Government have given us an opportunity to increase council tax over and above what we would have in the past few years. An increase by three per cent will bring in £137,000 a year which would mean that we would not have to introduce anything like fortnightly bin collections and not charge them for collection of green waste.

“This however is minimal by comparison to the deficit we will have compared to past years.

“The decision is not just for me to decide, we may have a bit more flexibility on what can be done, but that decision will be made by the full council in February.”

It has not yet been decided by the council what services will suffer as a result of the cut. However, Andrew Buxton, councillor for St Martin’s, is worried that bin collection, public and emergency services could all be hit hard by such a loss.

He said: “Refuse collection could still become fortnightly, they keep cutting the money but how are we going to run these services? It will affect people’s lives and people are going to lose their jobs, the Government do not seem to consider that.

“Losing this funding is going to put front line services at risk of being axed. The police are cut down to a point where they do not have the money to get enough officers on the street.”

Basildon Council have said the revised new council tax rate will be decided next month.

A spokesman said: “These figures underline the fact that Basildon is being hit particularly hard by reductions in Government funding and show the scale of the challenge councillors in Basildon face in setting a balanced budget for the coming year. The council’s response to the continuing reductions in Government funding will be set out in a budget report presented to council on February 8.

“A preliminary decision on council tax levels will be made at Policy and Resources Committee on January 25.”