Certain services provided by the council must be provided by law. These are known as statutory services. The council has around 1,300 statutory duties. This includes education services, children’s safeguarding and social care, adult social care, general and recycled waste collection, planning and housing services, public protection, road maintenance, and library services.
The level of statutory service provided is, in some instances, down to local choice. For example, we have a statutory duty to provide a library service, but how this is provided is up to us.
Other services are not required by law. These are called non-statutory or discretionary services and can include: planning enforcement, garden waste collection, theatres, and some leisure services.
Although these services are not required by law, they can be important.
For example, parking enforcement is not a statutory service, but we do have a statutory duty around the safety of our roads, and preventing people parking dangerously therefore helps to deliver this statutory duty.
Other services like our leisure centres help to improve health outcomes and bring income into the council to help fund local services.
Making choices about which services to stop or reduce is not easy.