25% Council Tax Annual Hike

[roses2]

Maidenhead and Windsor are set to increase their council tax by 25% this year whilst the big boss also gets a 25% pay rise from £150k/year to £200k/year.

Really bad news as this sets the precedence for other councils to do the same.

Where is the mediation authority that governs what a reasonable increase is? Currently you can't challenge this as if you don't pay you go to court.

Council tax in Windsor and Maidenhead could rise by 25% - BBC News

Good luck moving anywhere with cheaper council tax! That looks incredibly low for a band d property. The rest of us have been paying the higher amount (and more) for years!

Speaking about my council who piss money down the drain continuously, I will be very pee’d off if mine goes up more than 5%.

Could rise by 25% or will rise by 25%. Big difference in the wording.

A 25% jump on the face of it seems huge. But they are a low council tax area.

I live around an hour away and tax on a Band D is almost 50% more than it is in Windsor & Maidenhead. At the same time average salary in my area is £7k less a year than it is in W&B.

I suspect my council will apply the max 5%, so a 25% rise in W+B would still leave residents paying £500 less a year on the same band.

It’s an extreme example because I live in a very high council tax area. But a good example of how the system needs to be overhauled to make it more equal across the country.

W&M, when run by the Conservatives, have spent years patting themselves on the back for having really low council tax and having lower than allowable annual increases. As a result, they are on the brink of bankruptcy.
The new administration have come in, opened the books and gone WTF. This is the result.

Regardless of what your house is worth, your council still has the same services to provide - and many areas where housing is cheap have significantly more people in need of service provision and significantly greater social problems to address. People in Windsor paying more council tax doesn’t help people in Cumbria.

Nowadays they don't get the good pension though. The set up is different.

My Council has proposed 10%. Thank god. I'm in Scotland and the Council Tax freeze has wrecked services. It'll need to be 10% for the next few years.

I don't begrudge them it either as long as they are able to do the job well and have achieved it on merit. Unfortunately some kf these executives in our local area would have been booted out of private sector jobs at a far lower level than these types of job

I live in North Derbyshire, Band E, which I’m challenging as most other houses with same square footage in my area are Band D. Currently paying £2579 a year, it’s outrageous.

Kensington and Chelsea current charge for Band D £1500. A much more affluent area than where I live, it really doesn’t make sense. Or does it depend on which party runs the Council, we’ve been Labour for many years, the famous Hilary Benn was our M.P for years. I did once read somewhere that Conservative Councils fare better for funding from central government, whether it’s true or not is anyone’s guess.

whilst you might not use those services, education for example benefits us all. We want the next generation to well educated and able to fill roles which serve the community, where they earn a good wage and can contribute to the system like we all do. The schools are also educating the next generation of Drs, nurses etc who we will all rely on to treat and care for us.

A 25% increase is ridiculous. I know the council need money but we should be asking questions about the bigger picture. Under funding from the government and waste. I have enormous sympathy for those who will really struggle with this increase.

Kensington and Chelsea current charge for Band D £1500. A much more affluent area than where I live, it really doesn’t make sense.

Isn't that down to population? Because there are 10x more houses/flats (or whatever the ratio is) then each person pays less.

Not Edinburgh council

They need to pay for those lovely, fat pensions!

"Nearly £1 in every £4 raised in council tax is now being spent on staff pensions, The Times can reveal. Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to more than 300 councils reveal the huge financial burden that the “unjustifiably generous” Local Government Pension Scheme is placing on authorities"

I was going to say the same thing. I live in the NE and my band D property is well over £1k a year more than that.

25% does seem a jump all at once though.

Pensions! They need that much for the ponzi pension schemes which by the way you need more people joining the scheme to pay the increasing pensions out at the top, so it will only get worse.

The Tories have contributed to this keeping bills artificially low by restricting the amounts that LA’s could increase CTAX for a no of years whilst cutting funding to them. Many LA’s are close to bankruptcy. Public Services have to be paid for

@latetothefisting
But even added together, those services come to maybe 5% max of the council's outgoings - as you say the vast majority goes on education, social care, housing, none of which I use or have ever used. Obviously I understand I'm lucky to not need those service, and if it was a choice between paying my council tax or being in need of them I'd choose paying it every time
Were you not educated as a child? If you were then you have already used and benefited from education and are now effectively simply paying for your own education in arrears. Conversely, there eis a reasonable chance that you will need social care as you get older and you are therefore paying a contribution now in advance of potentially needing the service.

I do think we need to look at the SEN bill and how social care is funded but I think it's completely erroneous to believe that just because you don't use specific services during your 'contribution' years that you haven't or won't take advantage of them at some other time. We need to start understanding that ideally we need to be contributing enough over our lifetimes to cover our total burden. This means that there will be years where you will pay more as there will be years when your a child or potentially old where you can't contribute as much.

It’s a choice between decent services and paying more money. You can’t complain about lack of services and also complain about paying more. Which do you choose?

More likely demand. Many of these councils have low levels of deprivation, compared to poor metropolitan cities.

Is that all Band D costs in RBWM? Time they paid 2,500 like the rest of us. Stop moaning.

The police and the fire brigade want more as well. So you will have to dig even deeper.
How much does Charles pay on Windsor Castle?

Kensington and Chelsea current charge for Band D £1500. A much more affluent area than where I live, it really doesn’t make sense

The way Council Tax works is incredibly unfair as, as pps have pointed out, the most affluent areas usually have much lower council tax than poorer areas.

It's complex but, to put it simply, councils in "posh" areas aren't as reliant on Council Tax as they have other sources of income to balance the books. So they can afford to keep Council Tax low and, as they're often Tory areas too, choose to keep it low for political reasons.

If you're Kensington and Chelsea Council, or Westminster, for example, you can charge for parking and rake in millions a year that way. Whereas people aren't as keen to pay for parking in, say, Middlesbrough or Bolton or Barnsley - and if the councils in those places try to increase parking charges they get hammered by the electorate for damaging local businesses.

The Council tax base is a factor too. In wealthy areas you're likely to get more band D and upwards properties, whereas in poorer areas you have lots of small band A properties - who pay less.

Councils in less affluent areas also often have a smaller council tax base (eg the number of people who are paying full council tax) as more people qualify for exemptions on benefit-related grounds. It all adds up and means councils in poorer authorities have no choice but to implement the maximum council tax rise every year; while those in richer areas can freeze it for the political gain.

This has been going on for so long that councils like Windsor can raise Council Tax by 25% yet STILL have lower bills than most councils in less affluent areas. It's an unfair and regressive tax - and tbh if I was in Windsor I'd just be grateful I've got away with low bills for so long.

We don't even have proper streetlights anymore in our town. I'd happily pay more to have the lights turned up properly so I can walk safely. They won't do it as the money is desperately needed for adult social care.