New Mid Ulster council rates will help fund ambitious projects in the coming year

Although Adrian McCreesh had made a strong case for a 7.4% rates increase for 2024-25, the chief executive explained that the 5.9% figure arrived at would still enable the local authority to roll out wide-ranging initiatives.

He told council members at a special council rates meeting: “In setting a rate like this tonight, I would like to take this opportunity to remind us all of what the investment is going towards over the next 12 months.

“With that increase we are still one of the lowest per capita across all 11 NI councils by a country mile. We’re very proud of that because when you compare what we deliver compared to the per capita cost of our rates, it means we’re a very prudent and a very productive organisation.

“We will invest significantly in the 12 months ahead on PEACE PLUS.

“We’ll invest significantly throughout the 12 months ahead on the Levelling Up programme across Mid Ulster, which will be seismic and game-changing for many across our community, and reflects the values of the organisation.

“The villages of Coalisland, Moy, Bellaghy, Claudy, Castledawson, Moneymore and Castlecaulfield will receive significant investment amongst others, but specifically this year as part of these investment figures moving forward, and as part of the rolling out of our settlement regeneration programme.

“In addition to the capital programmes across our villages, I would like to also recognise the investment that’s going to happen this year across our pitches, our leisure facilities and our outdoor recreation walkways.

“We have investment now to better maintain what we put on the ground, which is very very important to our elected members, our public and to us as staff, and we’re very grateful for that.

“This investment and this budget in front of you tonight will allow you and this organisation to support close to £1m towards up to 800 community and voluntary and charitable institutions across Mid Ulster over the next 12 months.

“And while central government is retracting, local government is stepping up and supporting where others aren’t, and I commend you for doing that because that is where the need and the demand exists right across all shades of Mid Ulster.

“We will work in partnership with tourism, culture and arts this year, to develop significant projects in the Sperrins and at Bellaghy Bawn.

“We will work with central government and DfI in particular, to develop significant projects on Active Travel right across Mid Ulster.

“We will invest significantly this year on early professional work to progress the A29, the Cookstown bypass, and this budget allows us to make progress – for the first time in many years – on what a conceptual design would look like or what a bypass would look like for Dungannon, and I look forward to working with members on such projects moving ahead.

“We will also be working towards a significant Mid South West Net Zero programme for industrial lands, and working towards the first decarbonised industrial park.

“We hope to be able to progress that this year and make good progress on it.

“This budget that you’ve set tonight allows this council to do what it’s always done – be the supporter of small business [through] Go Succeed.

“Your budget will support 388 local businesses [which] could be started over the next 12 months to achieve their startup ambitions, and would allow a further 400 local businesses to grow and expand over the next 12 months, and I thank you for that on their behalf because they are the employers of the future and create the wealth that we use to deliver public services.

“We will also develop and stimulate 120 new business starts through the Go programme, creating 400 jobs.

“Our labour market partnership will continue through your investment tonight to do brilliant work, creating and bridging the skills gap and skills shortages that exist right across Mid Ulster.

“We will through your support tonight bring 100 people who have been long-term unemployed or economically inactive back into the labour market over the next 12 months.

“Again that is a tribute to the decision that has been made here tonight internally.

“We’ll be investing in our digitalisation because more and more people want to engage with this organisation on digital platforms, and we want to be leading that process because that is the way the future generation plans to engage and book their services and book their slots in our leisure centres, and so on and so forth.

“Some of the decision you’ve made will go towards our capital or plant machinery, upgrading what we have and transferring the diesel fossil fuel vehicles.

“That process over the next four to six years is a very expensive process of transferring from fossil fuel to other carbon-neutral forms of transport, and that’s where we have to get to by 2030.

“I just wanted to say that because sometimes in the smoke of the figures we forget about the outcomes.”

Council chairman, Councillor Dominic Molloy, welcomed the scale of the projects which the council is planning to spearhead in the coming financial year.

“We have a very ambitious project for this council, we are progressive, we are front-leading,” he said.

“Each and every one of us as elected members put ourselves before the people for election, and we want to deliver services for them, for our communities and rightly so, but that all takes some kind of investments.”