Council Tax: 94% of local authorities will have to increase rate
Council Tax is set to rise across England and Wales to cover funding shortfalls, but there is some good news too.
A whopping 94% of councils across England and Wales believe they will put up Council Tax to cover rising costs, according to a new survey.
Nearly all of the councils who took part in the research would increase the tax by more than 1.5%, and some households could see increases as high as 5%.
The research from the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) and the Municipal Journal (MJ) surveyed chief executives, council leaders, directors of finance and cabinet members for finance across 131 Councils in England and Wales.
Coming up short
Worryingly, the survey revealed that 10% of council decision-makers say that they don’t have the budget to meet their legal obligations this year, while 42% said they expected to impose cuts that would be noticeable to residents.
Nine out of 10 councils said it was a high priority or essential to look at other sources of income. Nearly 90% say they will have to increase charging for services while a further 82% say they will be forced to dip into reserves to gather necessary funding.
There’s already been talk of raising Council Tax to cover the ever-increasing cost of social care, but survey results reveal 90% believe that charging more for Council Tax isn’t a viable way to plug the gap in funding.
This is alarming as over half of councils (55%) said that adult social care was their greatest immediate pressure.
Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive of LGiU, said: “The Government has shown a genuine and radical commitment to changing the way Britain is governed.
“The system we have now is one which no one would design. Central Government and local authorities both want to see a sustainable independent funding model. But until we answer fundamental questions about how to make this work, devolution will be a process rather than a revolution.”
What's the good news?
Some councils have ditched proposed price rises that would have forced them to take a public vote. Residents in Surrey were relieved to hear that a jaw-dropping 15% rise has been scrapped by the local council in favour of a 4.99% rise.
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@brw and Mullerman. You're quite funny with your comment that we are ranting. Let me say to you that I was being polite when I used the word "SUGGEST". Sorry, the words I should have used should have been "STATE CATAGORICALLY". To help drive home my point, I would like to direct you to a GOV.UK page of a press release dated 19th Nov. 2015. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/councils-have-over-22-billion-in-reserves As you read (if you have the balls to read the truth) you will see that councils during the last year (that means prior to the press release) have "INCREASED" the amount held in non - ringfenced reserves by 1 billion. brw, feel free to apologise any time you want to, but bleeding heart tory/lib dems like yourself are not prone to apologising for anything. I also hope many of the decent people of this site do look at the page, and maybe they too will want to ask questions of their voted for self serving parasitic leeches (councillors), and get answers as to why so much or their money is held in reserves. Have a nice day brw and Mullerman. For the record Mullerman, I am nearly 64 years old, I don't think I am of the right age to be a councillior. So I will leave it up to the younger ones to right all the wrongs, but thanks for the suggestion, I did actually think along those lines. Finally brw, is the page link "EVIDENCE" enough for you. I await your apology, but I will not hold my breath.
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Driverman and Fender. Obviously spent some time with your rants. Driverman please evidence the huge reserves which have been run down and reclaimed by Whitehall rather than tell us you "suggest there are billions". Fender, you mean those self-employed who write off most of their expenses on income tax, set-up fancy tax avoidance schemes, pay themselves with wine and gold bars to avoid national insurance (and even if that scheme is closed another one comes along). That would not be "basically... a corrupt system, rigged up to serve those who run it". The world seems to be full of paragons of virtue so long as their salary is not from tax. And how many got 6 figure pay offs?
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Time for you lot to become a councillor and right all these wrongs!
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12 February 2017