Council Tax 2018/19

[boatbuilder]

It has been reported that the proposed Suffolk County Council Tax for the next financial year will increase by 4.99%.

What are your views on this when inflation is only 3% and wages and other incomes (pensions, etc.,) are also well below the 4.99%?

For information, the Green Bin charge is also increasing by £1 to £43 from March.

[Abu Nuwas]

BB, as we used to say in the coarse language of my yester-life ''It's a f-----g diabolical liberty, mate, that's what it is!'' I would like* to go through their accounts line-by-line, and I would bet that I could do better than that, without the numerous cuts to services, and reorganisations.

I do accept that the Government has been cutting the block grant, and therefore, something has to give. For me, that would begin with anything remotely connected with hospitality. ''Fact-finding'' trips would follow closely on. And then the proposition, that a complete cessation of new initiatives, bar those deemed essential by God and signed off by God, might have a one year's moratorium. All contracts would have a clause preventing non-disclosure on grounds of 'commercial dedadedadeda. And another thing...

* 'like' may be too strong a word.

[muzzy]

My personal view is that councils around the country should stop buying up commercial property as a way of making future income, and use the monies saved now to help with services provided now; this includes of course Suffolk County Council who are planning on spending over £20 million in 2018 on purchasing commercial property around the area. It is about time that councils started considering their clients, the normal man and woman.

[boatbuilder]

My 2018/19 Council Tax bill has arrived by email, up 4.9% overall. The single biggest increase is the Police & Crime Commissioner charge which is 6.8% and the lowest is Carlton Colville Town Council which is 0%.

[boatbuilder]

It's interesting to note from the attached PDF document below, that details the charges of ALL the Parish/Town Councils in the Waveney District that Lowestoft is the highest - even higher than Southwold.

It would be interesting to hear any comments on this, particularly in the light of the 'new' Lowestoft Town Council having been formed.

WDC-Total-Council-Tax-Charge-2018-19.pdf

(9.62 KiB) Downloaded 27 times

[boatbuilder]

After making the previous post, I decided to compare my current year's Council Tax bill to last year's and was quite surprised how the council have printed the breakdown and shown the individual costs and the increase (%) alongside each one. Talk about misleading us?

The first image below is as it appears on the actual bill. The second image is something I prepared using the figures from last years bill alongside those from this years. According to WDC the 'Adult Social Care Precept' has increased by 2% on the previous year. However, it has actually increased by 41.5% on the previous year. What the bill doesn't tell you is that the '2% increase' is a further 2% of the full 2018/19 "Suffolk County Council Non-Adult Social Care charge" of £1032.80 amounting to £21.04 on top of last years £50.64. (i.e. 41.5%)
The way the bill has been printed it is totally misleading. Then again, what would you expect of any governing body?

Council Tax Bill 2018/19

Comparison year-on-year 2017/18 & 2018/19

[muzzy]

Not sure why I'm surprised; I'm guessing that they were relying on most people simply taking their word for it. In my view this isn't misleading, this is verging on misreporting of accounts and fraudulent activity. Certainly deserving of an investigation, although I'm sure they would simply put it down to a computer error.