AN EMERGENCY budget for City of York Council has been unveiled by the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, which says it is increasing investment in frontline services by nearly £2 million.

The coalition executive said it was scrapping plans by the former Labour administration to charge residents for all green bin collections, and increasing spending on ward committees, recycling and support for small business.

"The budget puts an extra £250,000 annually into road improvements and sees funding to support local and rural bus services," said a spokesman.

"The Executive’s plans will be funded by reducing spending in areas such as trade union activity, use of consultants and social media.

"The budget sees money from contingency funds and underspends diverted into frontline services. In light of the financial challenges facing the council, a series of reviews will also be undertaken in housing, customer services as well as a bottom-up review of health and social care policy."

Tory council leader Chris Steward said: “This budget will bring York back to the kind of service-orientated council residents expect.

"Residents pay their council taxes, they want good basic services from the council and they want them provided wherever they live in the city.

"Labour needlessly cut front-line services for their own “nice to have” projects and pretended they could replicate national social programmes on a local level, and that’s not the way to run York during an era of general financial constraint." 

Cllr Keith Aspden, Lib Dem deputy council leader said: “This emergency budget is about reversing some of the worst of Labour’s cuts and putting extra money immediately into the frontline services that matter to residents.

"We are scrapping plans to charge residents for all green bin collections as well as re-introducing winter collections.

"Extra funding will be put into road repairs and gritting, community centres, and helping small businesses.

"The budget also supports our plans to introduce cross-party decision making and devolve more power to ward committees. I am delighted that it also sees extra investment to help boost the attainment of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

But Labour group leader Dafydd Williams said the budget was as 'unambitious as we would expect from the Tory-led Coalition and involves no commitment and indeed a backward step on the biggest challenge the city faces, the housing crisis.'

He said: " The review of all future council housing schemes is likely to give serious cause for concern to those rightly questioning the Coalition’s commitment to affordable housing. And on congestion, it is quite clear the Coalition don’t see congestion as a problem as it continues to hold back the city’s economic performance”.

Deputy Labour leader Stuart Barnes, Deputy Labour Group Leader claimed: “A tale of two cities is developing in York. This budget will benefit those living in rural conservative wards through subsidised bus travel and other measures, while the many of us will face cuts to city centre bus schemes and reduced support for desperately needed new housing."

He claimed it was alarming because the coalition was raiding the council's limited reserves and contingency funds to pay for the budget.

Cllr Neil Barnes, Labour spokesperson for finance and performance claimed that over half of the 'shopping list' was funded through Labour’s careful management of the council’s finances last year.

“This budget screams of short term thinking and populist headline grabbing and does nothing to protect key services in the future as the Conservative Government continues to significantly reduce the council’s funding," he said.

"It predictably targets the trade unions in a way that reflects the low value the Coalition places on the council’s workforce, the very people working to deliver its objectives.

“The council leader’s comments demonstrate very clearly that reducing social inequality is of no importance to this Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition”.

A Green Party spokeswoman described it as a 'very disturbing' budget.

"Much of it sounds like 'motherhood and apple pie' but given the massive cuts to local government funding already imposed by the former Conservative Lib Dem Coalition and being continued by the current Chancellor, it is actually impossible to fully restore one council service without seriously damaging another," she said.

"We are very concerned about the impact this budget will have on our most vulnerable residents since the only mention of health and social care needs is to continue with cost-cutting reviews.

"It is also disturbing that money has been taken from contingencies leaving the city without funds in the face of an emergency such as flooding.

"We welcome the re-stated commitment to cross-party working and to re-instating ward committees. We will work hard to make the new ward committees work well but we are very aware that any additional money  is not new but comes from elsewhere in the budget."

She added that it was 'disappointing but perhaps not surprising' that the administration had decided to cancel the Green Party's proposed free city centre shuttle bus pilot project.

"This was put forward as a positive concrete action following the failure to make cross-party progress towards a Congestion Commission to tackle York's traffic problems. We hope that in the light of this, the administration will support our call for an alternative 'People's Traffic Commission' at full council next week."