As some of you may know, I’m a member of the local Parish Council. Last night was a council meeting. It didn’t go well. We normally meet from 7.30 til 9.30. Last night were were still there at 10.30…
The first problem was a recurring issue with dog walkers and our land. The details are long and tedious, but we did have one of the local dog walkers give at 20 minute long speech in which she said “I’m not suggesting you are all corrupt, but…” and then listed things she considered us to be corrupt over.
Later we had to deal with the precept (our chunk of the council tax charge). This year, our precept on a Band-D property is £70.
The problem is that for the last ten years we’ve set the precept too low, so our funds are running much lower than they should do, and we’ve increased our expenses this year. According to our budgetary team, we need a 20% increase in precept to stand still. To build our reserves back up, another councillor proposed (and I seconded) a 25-30% one-off rise in precept for next year. Not one person agreed with us.
The reason seemed to be that the council are worried that people won’t be able to afford it. At the very top end, that would be £1.50 a month extra for a Band-D or 97p for a Band-A. What’s that? A quarter of a packet of smokes? A bottle of knock-off cola?
No, the council instead decided to go for a 15% increase.
I’m sure it’s entirely co-incidental that the entire council is up for election in three months time. I’m sure that no-one would favour a low precept to keep the electorate sweet instead of setting it high enough that we could actually bloody do something…
Tags: government, local government, PC
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