Your Council Tax Guide

Our aim: Every neighbourhood thriving

We want every part of the borough to be a thriving neighbourhood, where people work together and achieve a good quality of life. Over the last few years, our Towns and Villages Fund has seen improvements made or planned to local centres right across the borough. And over the coming years we have committed an additional £2 million to the Our Places fund, so we can continue to improve our local environment. We have invested in the borough’s fifteen libraries, with the new library at Thurcroft recently opening, the new Swinton Library under construction, and plans for new facilities in Wath and in the town centre in place. The Council continues to invest in road and pavement resurfacing. Over the last few years, we have reduced the number of potholes in our roads by 50%, and over the next four years we will spend an additional £16 million to resurface an additional 40 miles of local roads. And to ensure the safety of all road users we will invest an additional £400,000 in small scale local interventions such as measures to make it easier to cross the road.

Our aim: Every child able to fulfil their potential

We want every Rotherham child to make the best possible start in life, and this year the Council will spend £65 million on protecting and supporting our most vulnerable children and families. More than 1,300 families benefit from the Council’s Early Help Services, including using the borough’s nine children’s centres, giving parents support and advice when they need it the most. More than 500 children are currently living in the Council’s care, including those in foster care and in the Council’s own residential homes. The Council’s latest Ofsted inspection rated the services we provide to our most vulnerable children as “Good”. We have continued to invest in creating new and improved school places for children with special educational needs and disabilities. This year we will go further, and working with Rotherham Parent Carer’s Forum, we will open a new SEND Hub in the town centre, to give parents and children extra support in an accessible location. In the coming year we will spend an additional £370,000 on additional universal services through our children’s centres and more youth work, to ensure that more families are able to access the help they need. We will begin to invest more than £900,000 in a major upgrade of the children’s play facilities at Thrybergh and Rother Valley Country Parks and in eight other locations around the borough. And we will support every new family with a baby pack, to make sure they have the essential items all children need, and parents know how to access help and advice.

Our aim: People are safe, healthy and live well

The single biggest area of expenditure for the Council is Adult Social Care. That means providing support and services for anyone aged over the 18 who needs assistance to live independently, often older people or those with a physical or mental disability. We expect to spend £122 million in the coming year supporting over 3,670 adults at any one time, including 2,500 in their own homes. This is an increase of over £7.5 million on last year with the extra money helping to ensure we can continue to meet the increased costs of care, as well as helping to recruit and retain excellent social care staff. Our aim is to maximise a person’s independence through information, advice, guidance, aids and adaptations, reablement and assistive technology. In addition, services such as home care and residential care continue to provide support for those people who need it. We will continue to work closely with our NHS partners to support people to leave hospital and return home as quickly and as safely as possible, ensuring they are supported to regain independence. This will reduce pressure on our hospitals. The Council will support partners to ensure that excellent care is delivered for local residents. We are committed to building a new day centre to assist residents with Learning Disabilities, Castle View at Canklow, alongside specialist housing in the adjacent area. At the same time, nearly 20,000 Rotherham households live in Council homes, and we are building and buying hundreds more to meet the needs to residents who remain on our waiting list. As well as building new homes, we are investing £57.4 million in 2024/25 in our existing housing stock, ensuring it is always of a decent standard and that our residents have a safe and affordable place to live.

Our aim: A cleaner, greener local environment

Every week the Council collects 139,000 bins and provide 2,200 public litter bins right across the Borough. We operate four Household Waste Recycling Centres seven days a week. And in this year’s budget we are committing an additional £366,000 to support additional street cleaning in our busiest areas, including dedicated staff to make sure we’re getting the best use out of our street sweepers. At the same time we are cracking down on litter and fly-tipping. The fines for those who are caught will be increased to the maximum allowed by law, and to help everyone to do the right thing we are halving the cost of household bulky waste collections. We are proud of our three country parks at Thrybergh, Rother Valley and Ulley, as well as the award-winning Clifton Park, which are visited by almost 1.7million people each year, alongside numerous smaller community parks and green spaces across the borough. We are committed to reducing the Council’s carbon emissions and continue to roll out further tree planting as part of our commitment to reduce our impact on the environment.

Our aim: Expanding economic opportunity

The Council’s Employment Solutions team work to support local residents who need help to access work or training, assisting with debt or other challenges. Over the last three years 1,300 local people have moved back into work or education as a result. The Council has secured more than £100 million of grant funding to improve our local economy, including £20 million to support the regeneration of Dinnington High Street and Wath town centre, and £8.9 million towards the redevelopment of the historic Centenary Market in Rotherham Town Centre. Further work, due to start later this year, will see a new business district created at Templeborough, whilst the new Skills Academy at Maltby High School is nearing completion and innovation Skills Street project is under construction at Gulliver’s Valley. At the heart of town centre regeneration, the Forge Island scheme in the heart of the town centre is nearing completion this summer and will be home to a state-of-the-art cinema, a 69-room hotel, a mix of restaurants providing food from around the world and a coffee shop. Importantly, we want to ensure that local people and local businesses get the full benefit of this activity, so social value is integrated into everything that the Council does. In the last three years we’ve increased the Council’s spend with local businesses by more than £30 million a year.