This week council tax bills for the coming year will start to arrive on people’s doormats. I am conscious they will not make good reading and this is not a decision that the council made lightly.

As you will be aware, we have used alternative ways to balance the council’s books over the last couple of years. We have secured sustainable futures for our leisure and cultural services, we are changing the way we deliver our library services and we have created additional parish councils that can choose to provide those local services communities hold most close to their hearts.

So with all these changes being made, people will quite rightly look at their council tax bills and ask ‘why am I paying more for less?’ As part of your council tax bill you will receive a small booklet that will explain where your council tax is spent. Inside you will see that the council has budgeted £106.2m to be spent on providing services to vulnerable adults and children in 2017/18, including public health. That is 78 per cent of the total budget compared with 48 per cent a decade earlier.

This money will be spent on home-based services to allow the vulnerable elderly and people with disabilities to live in their own homes, it will pay for adaptations to help people live independently and will go towards residential support, which in some cases involves round-the-clock care with specialist help.

In Children’s Services we are spending more and more money each year protecting children and young people in the borough. These budgets pay for social workers who work with families to ensure children are living in a safe environment, foster care and adoption services, providing assistance for disabled children and supporting young offenders to help get their lives back on track.

Although the number of people in need of these services is relatively small compared with Swindon’s overall population, the costs involved are significant.

Next year we have budgeted over a million pounds so we can provide equipment to support vulnerable people, while the cost of placing a single child in care can cost up to £1,300 per week.

A residential care placement for one adult costs the council around £27,700 per year, while the same residential care placement for a person with learning disabilities costs around £72,700 per year.

The council tax booklet provides a useful summary of just what you will be paying for over the coming year.

Many of you will, fortunately, not need to call on any of our social care services, but these services are a lifeline for those that need them and it is absolutely right that we provide them.