Good evening and welcome to the Pompey Politics Podcast.

I'm Ian Tini Morris.

And I'm Simon Sandsbury.

And February comes around so soon.

It only seems like a blink of an eye since last year.

We were going over the council

budget for another year. And if you remember last year, harmony broke out everywhere with everyone

agreeing and holding hands and singing at the end. So Tuesday was the big day, Simon, and

our chance to review the cut and thrust of the chamber

and whether harmony broke out all over or whether there was this year, there was a little bit more spice to the debate.

Well, there was an outbreak of agreement, but it't universal is possibly the is possibly the teaser

that i could um that i could provide so um so yeah it's it's been a busy week in politics

we've had a couple of by-elections up country which haven't which either have gone really

well or um or not very well or as

expected depending on on um on how you view them but the big thing locally of course was the was the

budget meeting um yeah what um do you want to take any bets as to how it went?

Well, the first thing I would like to put a well, and I think I called this early,

that I thought the rise would be 4.99%, you know, which isn't, it's not the riskiest bet anybody's ever placed. So the rules are there's a 2% precept for adult social care and then you can stick up to

if you go to 3% then you have to have a referenda for the good people of portsmouth to decide whether

they want to bear that cost or if it's 2.99% taking your overall counts tax budget up 4.99, then it can go through if all the parties agree, or enough of the parties agree, to get it passed.

Because for people who may be listening for the first time, Portsmouth is a unitary authority, but in no overall control.

With the Lib Dems being massive, but not quite big enough to be half

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