To think council tax rises are a joke

[lljr82]

Another huge inflation busting rise in council tax, but they've closed the library, not fixed loads of potholes, reduced rubbish collecting, social care is apparently poorly funded, the school has to beg for money at the start of each term, closed the fire station, closed a hospital nearby, reduced police numbers and won't even visit when my car was broken into even though there should be CCTV footage of it.

It just seems like a joke. Where is the money going?

It is nit the fault of the councils it is national government’s fault. In Scotland we have had a 10 year freeze of council tax and seen massive cuts in services as snp did not full fund councils to make up shortfalls. I was chair of school board when council tax first frozen - as a result the school budget was cut by over £70,000 - the equivalent of salary for two teachers. This Tory austerity which is a political choice nit an economic necessity designed to help the few not the many.

Agree. Ours is nearly £200 a month where we live, and the the libraries and community centres are closing down, the potholes are dangerous and extreme, (and the rural roads around here in general,) the street lighting is appalling, we don't have a shop or any public transport (nearest bus stop is 3 miles, nearest shop 4!) and they have the nerve to charge us £2100 a year. For what?! Fucks me right off, and there is NOTHING I can do about it.

We pay it in full too, and get very little for it.

The ones who pay the least (ie, the ones who get it paid for by DWP) seem to be the ones who benefit most from it. Fucking typical.

Not even looked at ours yet. Don't know if it even arrived but have got a bit of a backlog of post to go through. So much junk to be filtered out sometimes I can't be bothered to start.

There is a cap. You need to query the bill. It must be wrong.

Our council is useless. Council tax has gone up by the maximum they can get away with without a referendum, they are charging to use the local dump and seem to wonder why fly tipping has increased and the roads are fully of potholes of which they occasionally fill in one and leave the others around it.

X post DaphneduM, agree with you

Thanks Seeline, the hut is really dilapidated and they are even asking for basics like crockery, pens, string, it's a great little place though and the kids all love it. Who maintains and monitors the parks and playing fields, the dog poo bins have disappeared from the end of our road.now we have poop everywhere.

Mine went up 14% last year and will be another 3% this year. Scottish government have cut our councils funding.

Council tax rises have absolutely nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with so-called austerity and central government reducing grants to local government. Along with increases in the requirement for adult social care and the national minimum wage.

Councils have to do a lot more with a lot less. So they are putting tax up. There's a limit to the cuts they can make and actually I'd rather pay more tax and get proper services.

Seems common sense to me.

The government is corrupt. Wastage needs to be addressed. The haves get richer, the have nots pay the price.

It makes me wonder how I'm going to afford it as my wages don't go up 3% a year. Terrifying

What is the most it can go up then?

Parts of my council tax are up 12% a year, the minimum any part is up by is 3%.

So sounds like I'm more unlucky than most. It is a big chunk of monthly outgoings.

Our council has put up tax due to no money. Yet they spent 6 months building a bridge for people to walk over in a tiny town of about 100 people, despite there being a bridge there already that was fine.

Nice new fancy pedestrian bridge sure. Waste of money, yep.

I do think that local government are used by central government as their fall-guys. Personally I would like to see both adult and children's services funded from general taxation - it is too big an ask now for local government to pick up the tab for what is becoming a national issue - both the aging population and all the various reasons and pressures that have resulted in so many children having to be looked after. A whole root and branch reform is needed for how our public services are funded, in my opinion. The Local Government Pension Scheme is a very efficient one, and is fully funded. They are at present looking into pooling together schemes from different local authorities. They have vast invested funds at their disposal, which the government are presently eyeing up to borrow to use for infrastructure projects!!!

Final salary pensions have been abolished for council workers. They've also not seen a pay rise over 1 per cent for years while their bills go up too. Budgets have been slashed by millions. And millions. If you don't like it vote against austerity .

Daphne completely agree. Social care, school funding and imo policing is the Government's responsibility. Waste collection, libraries, parks and so on- that is what local councils should be funding via residents.

Final salary pensions might have been abolished now but we're still paying for the people that they were promised to and it start to make a difference maybe in 30 years.

Just why do people think bills are having to up so much and why are they so seemingly incapable of joining the dots? It's not rocket science.

And no it certainly isn't "a joke".

There's a cap of about 6% on the amount they've allowed to increase council tax

Ours has had a 7.09% increase. No referendum.

They get away with it by just raising there part of the council tax bill by 6% whilst other parts of it have had a 100% increase.

I agree with the rise though as it is staying in my local parish mainly. I would pay more to that.

Just checked my bill - the Parish Council element has increased by 43.7%!!! Overall increase 6.3% - Conservative Council and as this is a Tory area I'm sure they will get in next time. The problem is the Colonel Blimp type aged Councillors who are in charge. Totally useless, but very good at looking after themselves, their mates and other vested interests. It is absolutely not the fault of the council staff, they have been shafted, like so many others in this country at present.

Sorry but councils have less money, significantly less money. Scarily less money!

The government have taken out billions from councils so they are forced to ask for more in council tax.

We can all reel out anecdotes about waste etc etc. However, golden boy consultants from the private sector have been all over this and they still haven’t found the magic bullet.

Because there isn’t one.

If anything, councils are inefficient because they have to go cheap. Cheap = more costly in the long run.

So let’s be clear. We have council tax rises because central government have taken away epic levels of funding.

There's a cap of about 6% on the amount they've allowed to increase council ta

Mine went up 14% last year and my mother's 17% so I don't think that can be true.

As the parent of a ds with SEN I can assure you that an awful lot of money is spent shuffling pieces of paper around, including electronically, time-wasting, obfuscating and doing as much as they can to ensure that services are not provided. Just my experience of the last 10 years anyway.

Information about the cap.

www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/council-tax-cap-to-rise-to-almost-6-per-cent-in-bid-to-tackle-social-care-funding-crisis-a3723506.html