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My letter to the Wiltshire Times.
Unlike nearly every other Wiltshire Councillor, I do not agree that, in the normal course of events, town councils should be free to increase their precept by any figure they want to.
I have written to the Wiltshire Times and my letter is below.
'Dear Sir,
I would like, if I may, to correct your report and editorial relating to ‘Unity to extract more in taxes’.
There was one lone vote recorded against this idea following the discussion at Wiltshire Council – mine. I admit that I didn’t speak during the debate as it was obvious that there was no point in me wasting my breath with councillor after councillor (both Tory and Lib Dem, with many of them being dual-hatted town councillors) telling one another of the importance of town councils being able to do whatever they feel like money-wise.
Apart from the fact that the proposal contained the very vague phrase ‘and uses other contacts to influence the consultation‘ (does this mean having Baroness Scott of Bybrook OBE speaking in The House of Lords?) there was the basic problem that I do not agree with town councils being able to increase their precept by any figure they dream up unless, perhaps, they have taken on new responsibilities from Wiltshire Council during the financial year.
A quick look at the accounts of town councils shows that they are seriously large businesses.
Trowbridge, for example, shows its 2015-16 income as £1.4 million from precept plus £904 thousand ‘other’; a total of over £2.3 million. Even with a 2% ‘cap’ this means that it could still increase its precept by over £28 thousand if it wished to. More importantly though is where this money goes. In the case of Trowbridge Town Council, over £1.1 million is spent on staff costs! No one likes to see people made redundant, but this equates to nearly 50% of their income – surely this should be looked at rather than hiking the council tax?
Chippenham TC seems to have similar figures of £2.9m income with staff costs of £1.2m. (Oh, and £1.5 million held as cash and short term investments). I would expect other town councils to mirror these figures.
Wiltshire Council has shed many staff (possibly too many) and perhaps the town councils need to look at themselves before penalising the hard working tax payer by imposing unreasonable council tax increases on them.
May 2017 will see every town council seat up for election. Perhaps that could be the time to put an end to party politics at Town Halls and get some genuinely Independent thinking in them.
Yours faithfully etc.'