Your council provides a huge range of services, many of which touch all our lives every day. Some of the most visible are those provided by our neighbourhood and highways teams.

Many of them actually cost a small portion of our overall budget but are nevertheless of vital importance. Our neighbourhood teams are out every day of the year, collecting your recycling and rubbish, mending potholes, mowing verges and parks, gritting the roads and keeping the traffic moving.

Behind the scenes, we have skilled people working on, among other things, road safety improvements, making sure streetlights are working and dealing with literally hundreds of queries every day.

Alongside town and community councils and local volunteers, our teams work to keep town centres tidy and the county looking beautiful.

And, like recently, when we have challenging weather conditions, some of the same teams deal with flooded roads, fallen trees and other damage, working to keep you safe. (You can help them in their work by reporting any issues via the MyMonmouthshire app, by email or phone and by recycling correctly.)

In the current budget proposals, we have no plans to reduce bin collections or to reduce the operation of recycling and waste sites. We are proud of our recycling record and focus on working with residents to reduce rates still further and dispose of the residue responsibly.

Thanks to dedicated Welsh Government funding, we are also increasing the resources available to the highways team for road repairs, and expect to carry out several essential repairs to bridges and highways in 2025. Many of the roads in Monmouthshire have suffered decades of neglect so this is not an easy situation to turn around. And now we also face the impact of climate change, with more frequent storms and landslips.

In the budget for 2025/6, on which we are now consulting, we are determined to safeguard these essential services, and to increase the money going to schools and into social care, also bringing down costs wherever we can.

This is made possible by an improved settlement for Wales from the Westminster government.

But I do not pretend that it will not still mean a rise in council tax, which reflects some of the cost increases we face.

You can see more details of our budget consultation and respond on our new ‘Let’s Talk Monmouthshire’ website - https://www.letstalkmonmouthshire.co.uk/

We hope that this year more of you will help us ensure that our budget reflects your priorities.