From our Local County Councillor
Over the last month I have been warning the parish councils that there may be a
difficult financial year ahead for the County. In Cambridgeshire we are
tremendously dependent on a good Government settlement, not only a payment of
the outstanding ten million pounds we should have had last year, but a generous
recognition that we have been on short rations for far too long.
The immediate problem is that the Leader of Council has announced proposals to peg the County's share of Council Tax to an increase of not more than 6%. In case you wonder what this might be, assume just over 90p per week for a Band D household.
Meanwhile, the Local Government Association announced in October that on average local authorities would need to increase Council Tax by twice what is projected for Cambridgeshire in order to stand still. Cambridgeshire Council Tax is the third lowest of all county councils in England.. Just so that you can put the county's Council Tax share in context, assume that about three quarters of the bill you get next April will cover the County's services and the rest will consist of District, Parish, Police and Fire and Rescue needs to run their services.
The County pays for education, social services, environment and transport (including roads) and various much smaller items such as births, marriages and death registration and emergency planning.
What concerns me is that compared with the year we are in at the moment, we are going to need a lot more money than 6% to cover the increases foreseen already in the two big spending departments, Education and Heritage and Social Services. A good settlement from the Government will obviously help a lot but my fear is nowhere near enough. Assuming there is little extra to come from Business Rates, we may be facing some very unwelcome choices by January.
In the past the County has put in money from Reserves but that is a short-term assistance. Anyway, Cambridgeshire has below average Reserves at about 5.5% of spending (compared with an average of 7.5% among the shire counties).
The County controlling group has an unenviable task ahead facing many difficult choices that seem, at this moment, worse than I can remember. As a member of the main opposition party I shall do my best to ensure that we act responsibly and constructively when the choices come to be made. I prefer the position of critical friend to destructive enemy. When the situation is as serious as it seems to me at this moment, political point scoring is unlikely to help. I hope all three parties agree.
May I wish a good Christmas / New Year break to you all, with particular thanks to those who have to work on our behalf during this period. Greetings!