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?

*As having

We've had a large monthly increased, news of which came about at the same time that it was announced that the council have ceased giving funding to the bus operator around here. They in turn have cut evening services and will no longer run on Sundays, that's not just a few services being cut but a total closure of the bus depot. This badly affects people who rely on buses to get to the nearest large towns and cities for work at those times, whether they work in catering, retail or the hospital.

www.theguardian.com/money/2018/mar/01/council-tax-rises-to-boost-bills-by-81-in-england

Wouldn't be the first time the papers get it wrong

I live semi rurally, ours has risen 6% so we were paying £110pm on a band A property and it will now be £116 pm. Our bin collections are now fortnightly but they’ve already advised us this will be changing soon to three weekly. They’re closing library’s left right and centre, bus routes have been massively cut, sure start centre went a while ago.
We also have to pay an increase for flood plans, even though whilst in the same county as the big floods were, we are actually nowhere near the flood areas (20+miles away)
I don’t begrudge paying but when everything’s being cut to the bone and wages aren’t going up, it’s another chunk out of an already stretched budget.

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.

Policing is also subject to capping. If the police want to raise precept above the set level the police and crime commissioner has to hold a referendum. The only policing area that has ever invoked this is Bedfordshire (pretty much the worst funded police force in the country). The public rejected it (a significant rise was put forward).

The other element is for the Fire Authority, although in a very few areas this may from now on come under the police (and fire) commissioner, as their potential remit has been widened.

i wouldn't mind if it was going into adult social care.....but it isn't
What is your point though? We all have different priorities depending on how much we use each service / how much it impacts us.

Gosh there are some huge rises in this thread. Mine has gone up £14 a month, so £140 a year (Band F - from £252 to £266 per month), so about 5%.

I don't think its a joke and I wasn’t surprised or shocked as it’s the same as the recent increase on some of our other outgoings. E.g. our DS's nursery fees also went up by 5% (£1,395pm to £1,465pm). I'm just hoping we'll get a 5% pay rise to cover it all....

County Councils : capped at 5.99% - but are cutting spending MASSIVELY to free up cash for ever rising amounts of adult social care (ie the elderly and disabled to need home support)

District/ Borough / City councils : capped at 5.99% - but are cutting spending to free up resources to cover NMW increases and less trickle down from counties

Both of the above are struggling to find the funds to repair worn out roads.

Parish and Town Councils : not capped - but as many are being forced to take on services from the larger authorities, the net change is insignificant.
parish and town councillors rarely get paid more than £1000 a year by the way

Police : capped at 5.99% : and could make their money go further if they did not have to pay for Commissioners

Hospitals : directly funded in ever decreasing amounts by Whitehall

Schools : Directly funded in ever decreasing amounts by Whitehall

10 years of council tax freezes?! Mines been going up 4-6% every year for at least the last 5 years.

Wages have barely increased.

lljr82
Council tax rises have been capped at 1.99% since 2010
Public sector pay has been technically frozen since 2010
BUT
THe NMW has risen - pushing up wages bills significantly
And Pension Auto enrollment has pushed up costs significantly for contractor companies
Plus LGPS employer contributions have risen (the numbers in that Telegraph link were rubbish by the way) to make up for increasing longevity and lower market returns.

HOWEVER
The rises have not been enough to cover the increasing call on the services
as is also the case in Schools (today's story about over 1/4 of secondaries running deficits)
as is also the case in the NHS (stories ad nauseam about trusts in deficit)

Ours has gone up by about £40 a month - now paying just over £270 a month. They've put it up and changed the way it's calculated. Any pay rise (public sector) I get this year is going straight to the council..... to partly pay for other public sector pay rises.

Council tax should have been replaced by local income tax years ago. Business rates by a local business turnover tax likewise.

The real maths of Local Government pensions ......

In Local Councils, gross wages are around 40% of all expenditure
LGPS contribution rates average just over 20%
so around 8% of total expenditure.
ALL LGPS pensions moved across to a career average in 2014

• there are no staff at all currently accruing final salary pensions.

The average public sector pension is worth around £5000 a year
(because there are a LOT of low paid and part time staff in the public sector)

The current crisis is caused by Austerity and rising demand
not pensions
and I say that as a public sector employER who bristles at the costs

People moving over in 2014 won't make any difference for decades for the pension funding issues. Plenty of places are reporting that lots of council tax is going on pensions.

The average 5k figure is very misleading as so many only did it for a few years (like both of my parents) and maybe partime. Using honest figures that show the amount of time they paid in would be a meaningful way to try to make a point.

Northamptonshire CC has just gone bust and it looks as if it's going to be dissolved

Holy shit. Will it go into special measures or something similar, or will it just be run by the officers until they have another election?

I've never heard of this happening before, and I worked in local government for years.

I wish they would put it up more. But I wish it would go back to being ring-fenced so the government can’t touch it.

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

Who are 'the wealthier' then?

It's the tip of the iceberg. Costs are going up everywhere, for many reasons, but one is the social and economic problems the attack on public services and local government for the past 40 years is causing. The lack of public services itself takes the backbone of the economy away, reduces jobs and therefore available local income as well as reducing the help available. And then central government starts refusing to fund any local council services. It's a bad loop. Northamptonshire is not the only council in trouble, it's merely the first. Anyone remember the hypocrisy of Cameron whinging at his own local council for cutting services when he took the money away for them to run them?

Mine has risen by 5.2%
My wage unfortunately has not increased.

Ours up by 5.5%. I want to pay more tax, but I object to propping up services slashed by the Tories’ massive cuts to local gov. Why can’t people see that this is unsustainable? So-called savings mainly mean pushing already vulnerable people further into crisis and passing on other costs to us. I’d love to know how much we have all paid for extra tyres and wheels because of the shocking state of the roads, for example. How many ‘voluntary contributions’ to state schools? This is what austerity looks like.

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.

^This, absolutely. The government hope that the councils cop the flack, and that people won't make the connection.

Imo, the cuts are ideological and "so-called austerity" is just a smokescreen. Tories won't give a shit about the poor, the vulnerable and the elderly.

A lot of the increases are for adult and child social care both of which have increased demand, think £500pw to foster a baby and £1000pw for adult in care home

6% rise this year for me. Not sure what I am getting extra for that although it looks like i am now paying towards some social care thing.