Around £70-a-year hike in council tax bills for Rugbeians as county council plans to save millions of pounds

The policies are part of the Conservative-run council’s 2020-21 budget and 2020-2025 council plan.

Of the 3.99 per cent increase, 2 per cent will be ringfenced for adult social care.

The remaining 1.99 per cent of the rise is for increases in the rest of the council’s budget.

The rise equates to £57.20 a year extra for the average Band D property, and of that figure, other rises to be included in overall council tax bills include an extra £10 a year for the police and, potentially, £5 extra a year for Rugby Borough Council – the latter to be decided on February 25.

At the same time, the county council plans cuts that they say will save them £6.2m from 2020-21. And from 2020-2025 £27.1m of cuts will be made.

Adult Services and Children’s Services will get an extra £33 million funding over the next five years, while a £4m ‘Climate Change Fund’ has been announced after all councils in the county declared a Climate Emergency.

A spokesperson for the county council said: “We need to look at transport for the future, flood defence and prevention and working with community groups by providing trees where needed.

“We want to protect Warwickshire residents from the risk of flooding that we have seen over the last winter by investing in gully cleaning and flood alleviation projects.”

Investing in infrastructure for charging electric vehicles is also among the plans.

Redundancies in council staff are also planned – the county council has been asked for comment on the number of staff set to face redundancy but has not sent one at the time of printing.

Cllr Jerry Roodhouse Lib Dem group leader said: “We believe that in broad terms the council’s priorities are going in the right direction.

“However the Liberal Democrat group is concerned that they need to be more specific such as on climate change and should be more in line with the Committee on Climate Change, likewise on child poverty – Tories scrapped the last strategy – we know the pressures and gaps are increasing and more needs to be done and lastly we need to start rethinking our local economy and look towards a more circular reduce/reuse model.”

A spokesperson for the Labour group took issue with the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives for not backing their motion to call for the county council to become ‘carbon neutral’ by 2025 and for the county as a whole to do the same by 2030.

Cllr Richard Chattaway, leader of the Labour group, said he is ‘very disappointed’ that the carbon neutral targets were not supported.

The Green Party group called for more investment for sustainable transport and skills training.