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?

About consultants and contractors.
When certain areas of the public sector have constraints on pay, many jobs get 0 applicants because they pay so little in comparison to private sector equivalents. The jobs need doing so contractor rates have to be paid.
For consultants these rates may well be inflated but might save more money than they cost even if the headline figures are eye watering.

Anyone who votes conservative should hang their heads in shame.

A big chunk of it pays for the nice and fat final salary pensions of the people at the top. It's pretty outrageous that people who can just afford to live on their wage (and can't pay into a pension for themselves) are funding the pensions of the Council leaders, man of whom are on more than the Prime Minister!

Information about the cap

So it is just the core council tax not the council tax bill total.

kaytee - Yes there is a cap of 6% on the county council element of the bill, but with us you have borough council, fire and rescue and parish council increases as well - hence county council + county council adult social care precept is within 6%, the other rises can take it over that amount - as I stated our overall increase is 6.30%. It's all typical pr - designed to bamboozle us!!!

Thing is there are several components. Our bill has a county council charge, a district council one, a town council one and a separate charge for the police. I think only the first two are subject to the cap.

The cap is only for certain kinds of councils. Many people also pay a precept to a lower level council (eg, town or district) which can be raised as much as they like. Different counties have completely different council structures so in different areas different levels of government pay for different things.

So if you're thinking - that can't be right, it might be for another county!

Anyway, I live in Northants.

We're having a fun time at the moment... massive council tax rises and huge cuts to everyday services. They have acknowledged that their budget plan is to maintain roads at a less than legal level even though it will leave them vulnerable to court cases. The government inspection report says a lot about central government attitudes to struggling councils (ie, tough shit cut to the bone and abandon any ideas you previously had about what was the bare minimum you wanted)

In Northants obviously our council has obviously made massive mistakes, but it's also had huge reductions in funding from central government.

We have mostly Tory Councillors (at all levels) and all Tory MPs. They are all standing around shouting at each other about whose fault it is and has been for months.

Similar problems going on in Labour councils, but at least they don't have the added dynamic that NCC has, where they were told by the Conservative party not to raise council tax for years for image reasons, when they really should have for planning reasons - and now they are being shafted by the party that told them to do that.

MPs and Councillors have all proved they're shockingly bad with money...

I don't usually say this, because voting is so personal but anyone voting Conservative here next time around needs their head checking.

mygod You mean Council chief executives, not leaders. They're different. The actual leaders are on allowances and I've never known one have a final salary pension from council duties.

There are police and fire precepts to factor in as well, Black.

WhirlWind, it's all grimly fascinating. Councillors are supposed to have training in Local Government Finance, but it's not compulsory to attend.

Hope you all come through this ok. It sounds bloody awful.

Absolutely agree on all the comments about not voting Tory - until we get shot of this lot things will never improve. It makes my blood boil - I have seen first hand the damage they have done in both Social Services and Education. We are more politically aware than most here on Mumsnet, but when will other people wake up?

Most of the problem at the moment is there was practically no rise at all, less than 1% a year from 2011 - 2016 where I live is it was actually static for most of the period, which was necessary at the time.

Naturally councils were squeezed to the limits during this period and now need to increase the spending in certain areas.

We’re in Scotland where there have been council tax freezes for several years, consequently our CT rose by 10% last year and 10% this year - I would far rather have had annual increases of 3% than these huge rises.

We live in a large house, because I run a business out of the house, so need the space. even though only DH and I live in the house (we don’t have children), we pay £3K per year in CT. I’m all for us paying our way, but there has to be a better way of going about this. Maybe add some extra bands to the top end, or calculate CT on the value of the home rather than the size.

Just observing from the outside, there do seem to be ways councils could save money. We have had several new high schools and primary schools built in our area over the last few years. They seem to be architecturally a lot more complex (and therefore more expensive) than they needed to be. Children don’t need decorative architectural stuff on the outside of the building to get a better education. Also, and I know it’s a small daft thing, every council building I have ever been in has been ridiculously hot. Staff in our library wear t-shirts when there is 12: of snow on the ground.

I don’t know what the procurement process is like within local councils, but DH works in higher Ed., and their centralised procurement is ridiculous - he was way for a couple of days last month and work paid £200 per night for a hotel which would have cost him £90 (exact same room) if he’d booked it himself.

One of the main problems at NCC is they decided on something then don't analyse the decision properly, that's just it. That's what they're doing, and they'll keep throwing money at it to prove they are right until the end of time (or money in this case!)

But none of this is the 733,000 who live here's fault. We weren't even made aware there was a problem until about six months ago, long after elections etc.

And for the record for the previous posters complaining that it only goes up when conservatives are in power, for the entire period where it was static it was a conservative government, labour would probably have done exactly the same.

The conservative party, in central government, told councils not to raise taxes over the last five years or so. This was not sustainable and was based on how they wanted voters to perceive the party, basically.

Many councils have now realised too late that their own party shafted them by asking them to do something which benefited the reputation of the Conservatives but not local councils.

The average rise on the total bill is £81 according to the BBC.

I can see how that may bite some people.

I know we are desperately under-funding our services so on one hand I agree with it. On the other hand I think if we closed off tax loops we might not need to do this.

sadly it will keep going up. adult social care needs to be funding and with an ageing population it will only get worse,
we also have more need for adult social care for disabled adults.
next we will more social care for disabled children, so many respite centres are shutting, families will no longer be able to cope.

I wouldn't resent it if they actually tackled the vast amounts of bureaucracy/waste, consolidated where possible: in fact ran the place more like a business has to, rather than the hugely wasteful monster it has become. Yes, government has slashed funding - but then I see how much the chair is paid etc and I suddenly lose a lot of sympathy...

Tbh it really p*sses me off that central government have cut the funding to local authorities so much. They knew that councils would be forced to put up council tax to plug the shortfall, so why not just put up tax rates? because they think it would look bad and lose them votes in next general election that’s why. This means that instead of an increased tax being more fairly collected and raised from the wealthier in society, it’s being raised from some of the poorer areas - If you look at what cuts were made to councils, more often than not it was northern labour-run councils in areas of high deprivation that had the biggest cuts. In these areas councils have a higher percentage of people who are exempt from paying council tax or on reduced rates. This means that everyone else in the borough who is eligible to pay full whack has to pay even more to make up the shortfall. In a more affluent borough, where a higher percentage of inhabitants are eligible to pay council tax the inhabitants actually pay less per household as the costs are spread out amongst more people.
It’s the sneakiness of it that really gets my goat tbh. It’s just another way of getting poorer areas to shoulder more of the burden that was previously taken on by central government. I would much rather have a government who were honest and said, look this all costs too much, we’re going to have to put taxes up by XYZ amount to compensate. By forcing councils into a position where they have to do it, they are hoping that voters will have ill feeling towards their local councils instead of the government and that those who are affected the most are in areas that would never vote for them anyway.

Ours has gone up 5%

I will be paying £9 more a month (I think) and the services are being slashed to beyond the bare bones!!

The majority of the money is going to social care and benefits according to the ‘where each £1000 of council tax goes’ leaflet. Only £7 goes on refuge collections no wonder my bins don’t get collected ffs (my biggest bug)

Wish I’d get a pay rise in accordance....

it would look bad and lose them votes in next general election that’s why. This means that instead of an increased tax being more fairly collected and raised from the wealthier in society, it’s being raised from some of the poorer areas

I agree with that.

Part of the problem is that the poorer people are the less likely they are to vote. Votes are power.

Some of the things you mention in your OP aren't the responsibility of the local authority, but I understand your frustration. We just got our new council tax bill in and it's gone up by £40 since last year, including water, which is paid for on our council tax bills in my part of Scotland. I imagine water is paid for the same way in the rest of Scotland, too.

We live in quite a rural area and the issues bugging me are fly tipping and having to wait a week almost cut off to have our road ploughed by an external contractor.

However, our county is huge and I don't envy the council in their job, because the government is deliberately cutting budgets. I believe they expect to provide no central funding to local authorities at some point in the not too distant future. I dread to think what will happen then.

When I see posts from people whose council tax has gone up £20 to £40 a month, I feel quite fortunate.

as for paying for pensions that hasn’t resulted in an increase.

This is the 10th year of 0% CT rise for our borough

Where is that? Greater London is reported of having the smallest rise at £56 a year

Although that doesn't give a break down by band so the lower bands may have had 0 and the higher bands change the average.