There should be no cuts to the street cleaning budget, a councillor has said, as consultation on next year’s budget continues.

Clr. Rhys Sinnett said there should be more focus on people’s quality of life in the budget at Tuesday’s (January 21) policy and pre-decision overview and scrutiny committee.

The committee was scrutinising budget proposals for next month’s full council and were asked for their suggestions for areas requiring more funding or areas of cost reductions that would impact too greatly on services.

Clr. Sinnett proposed “deleting cost reductions of £58,000 in street cleaning” while Clr. Josh Beynon called for the inclusion of funds to combat climate change.

Clr. Sinnett referred to discussions at the waste working group about re-investing savings from recent changes to recycling for “improvements to quality of life issues that many of us get calls about – street cleaning, area maintenance, weeding – as well as a response to fly tipping.”

The committee welcomed the proposed extra £100,000 to combat fly tipping, bringing its budget to £160,000 for 2020/21.

This would allow the service to meet Welsh Government performance targets including clearing reported fly tipping within nine days said Clr. Bob Kilmister, cabinet member for finance.

Clr. Kilmister said it was not changes to waste and recycling collection that had caused an issue as fly tipping had been going on for a long time and the majority of dumped waste was building materials.

He said a review of charges at amenity sites and whether their introduction were “counter productive” would be considered.