The council has published its draft budget plans for 2025-26 and before the councillors who run the Labour/Green administration make their final decisions, it’s vital that residents have their say.

Monmouthshire spends £216million a year, which is made up from Council Tax and a grant from Welsh Government, but over the years the proportion of revenue from council tax has increased, so the council is becoming more reliant on residents to fund local services. For many years, Monmouthshire has been the worst funded council in Wales and again this year, has received the lowest increase of all the 22 councils in Wales, at just 2.8%. Newport had an increase of 5.6 per cent, despite it being a largely urban environment where it’s cheaper to deliver local services.

Delivering social care, for example, is so much more expensive in a large, rural county than in a city, due to travel times. City councils can run fewer but larger primary schools with three classes in every year group, but in Monmouthshire nearly all our primary schools are single form entry, meaning just one class in each year group, due to geography. Unfortunately, Welsh Government’s formula for funding councils doesn’t recognise the additional costs of delivering services in rural areas, so Monmouthshire and other rural councils continue to lose out.

If Monmouthshire were funded at the Welsh average, we would have an additional £54million every year to invest in frontline services. If we were funded to the same level as the highest funded council in Wales, we would have an additional £98million every year.

A number of better funded councils than Monmouthshire are sat on obscene levels of reserves, Rhondda Cynon Taff have reserves of £269million, Caerphilly £222million. It’s immoral that these councils are putting up taxes on working families, while sat on reserves of hundreds of millions of pounds of public money. And yet, Welsh Government are giving these councils a bigger increase than Monmouthshire, which now has negligible reserves.

The council’s administration needs to be challenging the unfairness of the local government settlement and demanding the Welsh Government intervene to redress the balance. The Conservative Group has been calling on the council to work with similarly underfunded authorities like Flintshire, Conwy and the Vale of Glamorgan to lobby Welsh Government to introduce a funding floor – this would raise the percentage increase of the lowest funded councils. This would be a small step towards bridging the gap in the council’s budget plans.