Herewith my Christmas gift to the people of Bristol on which I've been working all through the holiday season, coming to you live on Christmas morning. Assuming I've got the cron job configured correctly that is. (whoops, I said the quiet part loud, and the loud part quiet).

The Council published its budget proposals for next year on December 17th. Unfortunately they are published as a PDF file, which makes it quite difficult to analyse the figures. Unless of course, you have some software to convert PDF files into Excel spreadsheets.

Here's the original version, and here's my initial conversion.

http://www.jamesbarlow.co.uk/files/draftbccbudgetjmbv1.xls

Broadly speaking the numbers add up (subject to some rounding errors).

If you want to get involved in the budgeting exercise, you could register on this AskBristol.com site and leave a comment. Or you could come along to one of the public budget meetings. You bring the tar, I'll supply the feathers.

A quick orientation for those new to budgeting. This is a revenue budget proposal, detailing changes to last year's budget. Tracking back year by year to find out the origins of spending decisions can be a painful process, but occasionally illuminating. Capital charges and extra borrowing - stuff bought on tick like the £24.7 million for the Museum of Bristol - will not be shown in this accounting.

My initial thoughts:

I've got a fiver that says at some point during the last couple of months a memo went round the senior officers at the council saying something like: "We've got to make an effort to cut costs, so look for ways to increase productivity, and make your departments more efficient". Hey presto: We've got lots of unspecified "efficiency and productivity" line items in the budget. The total saving getting on toward £4 million, which is equivalent to about a £20 saving for every council tax payer. But to be productive is to achieve more with the same resources, and to be efficient is to achieve the same with fewer resources. So when someone tells me they can achieve a saving by simultaneously becoming both more productive and more efficient I get a bit suspicious. I hope they can do it.

The Department of the Chief Executive is really tightening the belt this year, as they propose an increase of only £2 million in their budget (£10 for every council tax payer), including an extra £106,000 pounds for three more issues a year of the "Bristol News" - a glossy PR sheet that I can't recall ever seeing. Regardless, "Bristol News" is now to be renamed "Our City", possibly using the Pluralis Majestatis. The latest issue is available online, and is the usual exercise in spending your money to tell you what a great job is being done spending your money.

I said the numbers added-up, but the Chief Exec is the only one to make a minor slip - their departmental total for the current year doesn't include the £50,000 cost of the Director of Public Health. But what's £50k between friends?

The "Our City" booklet gets the justifications in early, stating:

"In 2008/09 the council will face some unavoidable pressures that will have implications for the budget and will limit the spending options available."

Hacking through the Adult Community Care figures to work out specifically what these implications are will be a proper forensic job - although I have previously discussed the subject of Home Care and Care Homes, which will be the cause of a ruckus in the New Year.

The Planning, Transport and Development directorate wins the award for barmiest accounts - loss of parking income apparently implies and extra £300k in the kitty, and "Increased income and operational savings related to long stay parking, controlled parking zone and street closures" apparently means that instead of losing £585,000 they're only losing £540,000. I'm buggered if I can work out how they calculate their figures, but needless to say the Lord Mayor won't be affected. And don't even get me started on the "Above Inflation increases for local bus service contracts."

It would appear that the Severn Beach Line will finally get the full £450,000 for an increased service. This sort of subsidy is - in the long term - counter productive, but in the short term it might help to alleviate some of the structural problems with the British Railways.

And of course there's another £250,000 in the pot for Abolition 200, back by popular demand for a second year.

The unfunded requirement implied by this budget is £167,120,000.00. That's one hundred and sixty seven million, one hundred and twenty thousand pounds. What does that mean for the tax payer? Well the official statement is that council tax will be going up by 4%. But that doesn't seem to work, unless there's been a massive increase in the taxbase over the last 12 months.

Assuming the Police and the Fire Brigade can stick to something like an inflationary increase in funding - say about 3% - then the overall council tax increase will be around 5%. On a Band D property, your bill will rise from £1423.79 to £1507.12. In Band A, you'll pay an extra £51.53, and in Band H you'll pay an extra £154.60

So, on that note: Merry Xmas!