Participants overwhelmingly told the Council that crime and anti-social behaviour was one of their biggest concerns, along with fly-tipping and street cleansing, and potholes on roads and defects on pavements.
Thanks to the settlement, it is the first time in 15 years that the Council has been able to invest to this extent.
Cllr Richard Brown, Coventry City Council’s Cabinet Member for Finance and Strategic Resources, said: “We know the difficulties that local people have in managing their own household income. That’s why we have used additional money from the Government settlement to keep the Council Tax rise below the maximum allowed.
“We've worked hard as a Council to carefully manage our finances while dealing with years of austerity and unfair funding. In fact, over the previous five years, we have been forced to save £67m to meet our statutory duty of setting a balanced budget.
“During that time we have lobbied hard for a fairer Government settlement, so we are delighted to see the results of our efforts.
“We used more than £2m for a one-off investment to support services including roads and footpaths, street cleaning and tackling fly-tipping last year. That helped ensure that last month Coventry was one of only 16 councils across the country to receive the Department for Transport’s top ‘green’ rating for the state of our roads.
“Now we are putting even more funding into the services that residents have told us matter most to them.”
The Council's annual Budget Report will be considered by councillors on Tuesday 24 February.
If approved, the report outlines investment plans in 2026 and 2027 including:
- Extra waste removals to prevent fly-tipping hotspots
- Extra street cleansing
- Improving the condition of more road and pavements
- Improving employment opportunities for young people and
- Investing in ways to tackle anti-social behaviour
Cllr Brown added: “We have already taken action against fly-tipping culprits and will not let up. We have added extra CCTV cameras in the places with the biggest problem, and now we are also looking at ways to educate and help communities by setting up a community skip service in parts of the city.
“Extra neighbourhood wardens will be recruited to deter and act on anti-social behaviour, and we'll be sending more clean-up teams to deal with street cleansing too.
“We have piloted a scheme in Ball Hill and we have been able to act on fly-tipping response times – which have been cut from five days to one and a half days. We want to repeat this in other neighbourhoods.”
Cllr Brown added: “We've also found money to refurbish the wonderful Plas Dol-y-Moch – which is an institution for so many Coventry residents. It's provided 60 years of memories of the great outdoors of North Wales for local kids.
“This investment will mean that the facility remains financially viable and fit for modern use for the future.”
