Setting its annual budget yesterday, councillors identified a £1.8 billion spending programme focused on investing in services for children, older residents and those most in need of support.

In the highest spending on school buildings in recent years, £296 million will be invested towards five new campuses (Granton Waterfront, Newcraighall, St Catherine’s, Gilmerton Station and Builyeon), five extensions (Hillwood, Queensferry and Frogston primaries, plus Castlebrae and Craigmount high schools), plus a replacement building for Fox Covert.

The council will invest an additional £30m towards upgrading special needs schools, with improvements designed to allow as many pupils as possible to see their needs met locally. An additional £6.6m will be spent on road safety, particularly around schools.

A total of £40m will be spent on roads and transport in the year ahead.

Focusing on areas identified by a Women’s Safety survey, where certain parts of the city were described as feeling unsafe, as part of this spend the council will invest £12.5m this year and next improving roads, pavements and streetlights. It will invest a further £6.6m in Safer Routes to School and travelling safely.

Supporting a Just Transition, affordable, net zero housing including 3,500 new, sustainable homes in the £1.3bn transformation of Granton Waterfront will be taken forward.

The council will also invest £50m in purchasing and building suitable temporary accommodation for people experiencing homelessness.

Following agreement of the Housing Revenue Account budget, the council will continue work to retrofit high rise blocks and spend £14.8m towards new affordable housing and upgrades to void properties, to get them back into use as homes. Council rents will be raised by 7% to raise new funds to upgrade housing.

An increase in Council Tax rates will be used to balance the budget and to increase spending on frontline services like education, social care and road safety around schools; in direct response to calls from local residents during extensive budget consultation.

Council leader Jane Meagher said: “Together we’ve been able to deliver a balanced budget and prioritise spend on the areas residents have told us they care about most, while staying true to the Council’s core commitments of tackling poverty and climate change and ‘getting the basics right’.

“We’ve updated our plans at every step, taking stock of the thousands of responses gathered during our public consultation calling for us to invest in our frontline services.

“Residents and community groups have been loud and clear that people want spending on schools and roads to be protected, sharing concerns about the local impact of the national social care crisis, and that they’d be willing to see Council Tax raised to make this happen.

“We’ve listened and we’ve gone further – agreeing record spend on over a dozen new and existing school buildings, specific funding for road safety around schools and substantial extra money for the Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership. We’ll be tackling Edinburgh’s housing and homelessness emergencies and investing in our communities, including money towards roads and a new Blackhall Library.

“For all that, we have had to make many difficult decisions to make substantial savings and I’m grateful to all councillors for their input. We remain the lowest funded local authority in Scotland, and I will continue to call for fairer funding for Edinburgh.”

Finance and resources convener Cllr Mandy Watt said: “Residents are aware of the financial challenges we face following years of underfunding, and they’ve told us in their thousands that they want to see vital services protected and enhanced. I’m pleased that we’ll be able to use the £26m raised from an 8% increase in Council Tax to protect and improve these services.

“Huge pressures on health and social care and housing remain unaddressed nationally and while this Budget does everything within our power to protect local services, we need greater action to be taken at a government level.

“A huge amount of work has taken place to consider our budget options, with detailed proposals reported to Committees and tweaked in the months leading up to today’s final decision. I’d like to thank council officers for all their work on this.”