Welcome to the Oldham Budget Simulator

Welcome to Oldham Council's budget simulator, where you can tell us about your priorities for Council spending in 2010/11. Your responses will help inform decisions about Council spending and council tax.

The focus of the Council’s budget proposals is to prepare for the financial challenges we face over the next two years. At the same time, the budget proposals are based on the importance of dealing with matters now so that the Borough is ready for the economic and financial recovery over the coming period.

In response to results from the Oldham Council budget simulator last year we:

• limited the council tax increase to 2.5%, the lowest in Greater Manchester
• invested community safety measures across the Borough including alley-gates and the Passport to Summer programme of activities which led to a big reduction in anti-social behaviour
• invested in delivering services locally through Area Working pilots
• invested in improving the cleanliness of our streets with more litter patrols, faster graffiti removal, dandy-men and extra street sweeping. Our streets, roads and footpaths are now the most litter free in Greater Manchester according to the former Tidy Britain Group.

Oldham Council provides a wide variety of services, from education to emptying people's bins. We have limited choices about how some services are delivered, due to legal obligations and constraints imposed by government policy. As a general principle, we are giving priority to protecting key frontline services. The Council will be able to make a lot of the savings it needs by continuing its programme of reorganising to work more efficiently. You can read and comment on our detailed budget proposals on the Oldham Council website.

We have focused the budget simulator consultation on the areas where there are real opportunities for your views to influence decisions about the 2010-2011 budget. This year, the options within the budget simulator reflect the four Council priorities which your suggestions last year helped to shape:

• A confident place — with safe neighbourhoods and clean green spaces for all to enjoy
• A university town — with good education, learning and training to improve the skills and choices of our citizens
• An address of choice — a healthy and active place with suitable housing for all
• Services of choice — quality services that provide value for citizens.

The budget simulator provides information about Oldham Council services. You choose how to allocate money to these and can see the potential impact of your choices on the overall budget and on Council tax. You will see that increases and decreases to spending have a greater impact on council tax than on the overall budget. This is because over half of our budget is a fixed grant from central government.

After making your initial choices, you can read about their potential consequences for Council services. If you wish you may then make changes before sending your budget. You may also add any comments you have about your spending priorities or the budget options being considered. You will then be asked a few questions about yourself. Please answer these as they help us interpret the results more effectively. The information you provide will not be linked back to you as an individual.

Please take some time to complete this budget simulator. We need your views to inform our spending priorities, so that we can keep putting resources where you say they are most needed.

Thank you in advance for your time.