Your Council tax rise?

[Netcurtainnelly]

How much has your council tax has gone up too and how your managing all this increase all the time .
Ours gone up a hundred and five pounds from last year

4.8% so £117 per year.

Which isn't anywhere near as bad as expected.

However my water is up from £66pcm to £98pcm and my tariff for energy which is already a whopping £180 pcm ends in June and from another thread I can see the tariffs being offered are £100pcm more than people pay now.

So I expect come June I'll be utterly fucked.

I agree @Amiacoolorwarmcolourand we are reaching a tipping point. It’s not good enough to simply say that things such as school transport have to be paid because it’s the law. Change the law then because it’s ridiculous and unsustainable. The amount of subsidies and extra support being are getting (funded by everyone else) is out of hand.

up £32 a month but as it’s Scotland it includes water

fee for garden waste collection (march to November) has risen from £50 to £52 and it’s a gamble as to whether they remember to lift it

id love for my salary to rise even enough to keep in line with everything else going up but no chance

Ours has gone up 4.99%, it’s higher than surrounding areas anyway due to us having a parish council.

Ours has gone up by 9.5%.

when we moved into our house 25 years ago council tax was £96 a month and we are now £214 each month.

love a February and March month when we don’t have to pay it!

The increases for water annoy me the most. Water companies behave badly, get fined and the just raise our prices to pay for it. Why should I pay the water companies’ fines? I didn’t act badly and it’s not as if I can change water board!

It was £319 a month and is now £358. That’s a band F in Edinburgh.

Gone up 9% and band c is now £2100. We’re a Reform council and they massively pushed for 10% rise but ‘only’ got 9%. This is a warning to anyone planning on voting reform in the next election - don’t!

We’re band F, 5y ago, £280 (over 10m). Now £363.

I’m in Scotland, it’s gone up 8.9% to £3k a year. I did laugh when the council website said they’d taken into account cost of living and decided not to increase it the full 9.5% they’d initially planned, how gracious! I’d mind less if the roads weren’t all full of pot holes deep enough to transport you to Narnia and i
didn't have to pay an extra £50 for my garden waste permit.

Do not get me started on the water companies. They should have to pay for all of the issues. It was them prioritising shareholders which means they don't have enough money to fix the infrastructure. I'm furious those costs are being transferred to the customers, who already paid for the infrastructure and had that money misdirected.

The problem with your plan there is that if carer's allowance meant you couldn't get extra help, nobody with a complex package would be able to have any family help at all. For example my late husband needed 24h double cover, so 2 people 24 hours a day. I'm not two people, so I always needed help. The NHS calculated my personal contribution to the package at approx 4.5 million pounds, but I could not have done it alone. Just physically I could not have lifted him. Carer's allowance was extremely cheap in comparison at £54.10 a week at that time. I needed that money (to eat food basically) and would have had to leave the household if I was not able to buy food.

So this is probably not a money saving idea of yours. I actually would abolish carer's allowance for other reasons, but I don't think it would save money to do so.

10% for the main part and 50% for the town precept!

@PersephoneParlormaid our garden waste collection went up to something like £80 so we cancelled it. Everything is just getting ridiculous!

In fairness to our reform council, they’ve kept it to 2.9%, so around £75, the water rates however!!!!!

What is the actual end-game here? Forcing people to pay more and more tax and cut back on essentials, until they just have a switched-off fridge full of fresh air?

At least with income tax, you have some flexibility with how much you do or don't earn and (painful as it can be to), it is proportional to what you earn.

When we have people in band A or B properties being forced (under threat of prosecution and bailiffs) to pay more and more to be allowed to live there, and struggling more and more every year, is the plan to actually get poorer folk living in bus shelters or bringing back workhouses? At least they could be honest about it and admit that they simply don't believe that less well-off people should be entitled to their own homes.

It's like the councils equivalent of NCP. They have the firm conviction that the more money they keep demanding, the more money they'll keep getting in; but once you take people beyond what they are willing - or even able - to pay for something that isn't strictly mandatory, they will simply stop using it and find an alternative and you'll get in £0.

The garden waste price increases are especially stupid, as many people will just end up stuffing it into the bottom of their main bin instead - so they still have the same amount of waste to collect (and much of it won't be dealt with in the most appropriate way), but be getting less money in.

Either that or people will just burn it in their gardens - with all of the social, environmental and safety risks that will bring with it.

If you get for example a mobility car, then you should not qualify for any other form of free transport. You get carers allowance then you should be caring for that person and not expecting outside free help. You can’t have it all ways.
You are claiming benefits then a percentage of that should be taken from you and put in a pension pot and you be expected to use that in retirement the way that those who have worked have to.

so from £83 a week you are going to force a carer to join and pay into a pension, then the money remaining you can’t have anything for free? What is it you think carers get for “free”?

it’s not individual carers that are the issue, it’s large investment companies charging extortionate amounts for care at £20,000 a week in some cases - £19,927 more a week than an individual carer, that are the issue

Guess they didn’t find all that waste they insisted would be incredibly easy and quick to cut.

Water bills gone up. I'm surprised there's no campaigns.
Enough is enough. You can't keep asking more from people all the time.

We're in a Reform area and ours has gone up less than last year, 4.1%.

I am childfree too, but the way I see it is I am paying for the services I used when I was a child. If that makes sense.

The children of today are the ones whose taxes will pay the pensions of the future, so they're kind of necessary beings!

You can’t have it always.
If you are not working and therefore not contributing to society then who do you think should subsidise your lifestyle?
Let’s get real here.
Many, many none working people are not crippled with disability.
There was a post not long ago by someone who worked in benefits. She told it how it really is, in that she helped lots of people who had barely if ever, done a days work in their entire life claim benefits. What she said was that the freebies they were entitled to made them a lot better off than pensioners who had worked up to retirement age and saved into a pension.
This is wrong.
If you get X benefit then you should not receive Y benefit. So if you get a free car due to disability then what is the logic in letting that person use free hospital transport. That is my argument. If you are too disabled to drive, then take the car away! Let someone who can use it and needs it do so.
There is so much waste it’s mind blowing.
Never mind though, the children of today can work until they drop dead to pay for it all, never mind the fact that they won’t receive a state pension.