Vocal Voices

According to the County Councils Network some 133 of 151 councils will be putting up council tax by the maximum 3.99%, but what else can they do?

Various figures put it that household council tax and business rates, the bulk of a council's income, has risen from about 73% in 2010 to about 80% in 2020. That is because the revenue support grant from general taxation, another large chunk of council funds, has been reducing since 2010 - austerity and all that.

Goodness knows what the answer is but under the current funding formula rich councils (plenty of E and F properties) get richer while the poorer ones (A & B) get poorer. Same goes for those with plenty of profitable council run tourist attractions, even natural ones, versus slag heaps.

It is long past time to level the playing field but it is not going to happen.

Not sure yet what ours is increasing to but we're currently paying just under £200 a month in Band D, and from July they're going to make garden waste chargeable, at £43.60 a year. We also have to pay to take certain things to the tip, like building rubble, soil, slabs, turf etc (there's quite a list) ranging from £3 to £4 per bag or per item depending on what it is.

Jo, I don't know about the garden waste charges as it's in with the rent and the groundsmen take it all away. We can take most things to the tip FOC if we have a Leeds sticker on the windscreen. It's in the same place where the old tax discs used to be, if you don't have one you pay similar to your place.

I suppose if pushed I can muster a bit of sympathy for councils, but not much.*
The government has cut their cash. So to get some cash bak they are feverishly granting planting permission for housing development. 500 houses in Castleford; we must have had 500 more houses built in our village as well. Most are four and five bed detatched. So you are talking £1,600 minimum for every one. For every 1,000 house that's £1.6 million a year, every year, for Wakefield Council. And there have been many thousands of houses built in their area over the last ten years.
Even a terrace round here pays £900+ pa in Council Tax.
Yet the roads in our village are awful. Potholed, patched up, rubbish.
We pay a lot but seem to get sod all back.

*I used to work for a council. I know what they are like.

Up until now garden waste has gone on the same day as the recycling waste with the cost included in council tax. Quite a few councils around here already charge extra though so South Staffs are late to it. Cannock council, which we're right on the border of, don't charge but no doubt will do soon. Wolverhampton and Birmingham already charge but not as much as we'll be charged.

Fly tipping's become more of a problem since the tip charges have been brought in and there's no residents scheme like you have. Everyone has to pay. We had over 20 bags of soil and rubble from when our patio was laid last year which we had to get to the tip and the fella who fitted the fence had a trade permit for the tip so did us a favour by taking it in his truck when he took the old fence and charged us just an extra £20.

Charge people to take rubbish to the tip and some of them will fly tip. Rocket science it isn't.
Mind you, some lazy sods here won't take things to the tip even when it's free! Last year I saw a three piece suite dumped in a field which is only one mile from the recycling centre!

There was a solution. It was called the community charge. A per person levy for the people who lived in an area.

Because people removed themselves from the electoral role to become invisible and, therefore not pay their share of the services they use, it was called the poll tax.

It is the perfect solution, it matches income to the people using the services.

But nobody is ever going to go there again so it is what it is and we're just going to have to live with it.

Basic Council Tax is going up by 4% here as well, and Dorset is already, I understand, the highest-charging rural county in the country.

Executives pay is coming under scrutiny, I've heard it said many heads of departments are paid in excess of £100k annually.

We already pay £52.50 pa for garden waste collection fortnightly, otherwise it's a trip to the small council tip in Shaftesbury that can, and I've experienced this, take the best part of a morning to queue up for access. Fly-tipping is rife in the rural hinterlands.

And just to top that, we've been notified our local hourly estate bus service is being withdrawn from April - the Council won't fund it.

So, plenty of unhappy bunnies down here also!

I was going to mention the Poll Tax....

On paper it looked like a fair(ish) system but like most things 'government' it was badly implemented and then badly run.

Another idea that might have had legs was the LibDems' local income tax.

Neither might have been perfect solutions but they, plus a few others, probably could be looked at afresh so long as nobody from any level of government or the civil service is involved.

We don't pay any.

And we had 3 years grace, as it's our main residence and we'd moved from one area to another. We also had 5 years without payment in the Algarve.

We'll be going into finances next month, to see if we're paying anything this year. Now we have a pool, it might have gone up.

The previous owner was paying 39 euros a year, but as we've been told, we have no street lights, our own fossa, our own water and we pay the lecky bill. The rubbish collection is down the track and done once a week, twice in the summer months and the recycling is near the bar or in Ourique.

When we lived in England, we were paying 1500 squid a year, but that was almost 15 years ago.