Council tax only frozen for a year, who will pay next year??? Options

[Richard Garvie]

So Alan Law says the Conservertive administration should be congratulated for being able to "freeze" council tax for the coming year. Isn't it true that this has nothing to do with the local council, who have actually raised council tax by 2.5%??? It's only a grant from the Government that is freezing council tax for a year, but who will pay the extra 2.5% per tax payer next year?

That means that we face a council tax rise of at least 2.5% next year, so realistically it could be 3, 4 or even 5%??? Hardly the picture perfect image you present via the NWN then Cllr law!!!

[dannyboy]

Have the RSPB said they'll take the Centre?

So once the land has gone, where are you going to get the other £30 million from?

Cut & Savings, synonym......

[Richard Garvie]

Have the RSPB said they'll take the Centre?

So once the land has gone, where are you going to get the other £30 million from?

Cut & Savings, synonym......

The difference is that Labour will publish a plan of how it would deal with those cuts. If the Lib Dems experience big losses around the UK in the locals, I think Clegg will be gone before the end of the year, meaning a general election in October or May next year and the funding settlement for the next four years may then change.

As for the discovery centre, it isn't up to me to approach people like the RSPB. But if Labour get controld of the council, that is what I will personally be suggesting.

With regards to the other £30m, around £14m of that will be taken care of by the Conservatives tonight, with £8,2m cut from the coming year, the £2m additional revenue from council tax and a £2.9m cut for adult social care planned for next year as part of the saving package they are implementing. With other cuts for next year built in to saving plans starting this coming year, around £14m of the cuts required have been allocated.

That leaves about £16m of savings to find, and with the 1.9% council tax rise already built in for next year that will mean we have to find £14.5m over the three remaining financial years of the next four year term. Personally, I would like to see the 1.9% increase changed to 1%, and raise council tax by 1% for the next four years which would be a net increase of 4% over four years and allows for smaller rises whilst the economy recovers. If we did that, we would need to find around £12m over the remaining three financial years.

The one factor we haven't discussed is the impact of lower education grants to the authority. Do we as an authority protect education at present levels and hit other services harder, or do you allow cuts to be made to education like the current council have done? There is another chunk removed next year, and nobody has yet said what they will do. We had pledges from our MP from before the election that education budgets would go up under a Conservative led Government, and up until January the conservative administration were denying that funding for education would go down. Personally I'd look to protect the education budget, but whether that is even possible with the scale of cuts we face due to the pupil premium funding scheme remains to be seen.