Council leader warns ‘money is blooming tight’
Maidstone borough council has voted to increase its share of council tax by 3% – the maximum permitted by law without the need to hold a referendum. The increase should come as no surprise to residents, since the local authority declared that was its intention as long ago as July last year.
Council leader David Burton (Con), in recommending the April budget for adoption last Wednesday (February 23), said years of prudent financial control had enabled him to propose a budget that saw very little reduction in council services compared with the current year, despite inflation having reached double figures in the last 12 months, and despite, just two days before the budget meeting, learning that Kent County Council (KCC) was withdrawing £334,000 of funding towards the borough’s waste service provision.
Cllr Burton said there was
enough contingency in the budget to meet the sudden loss of the money in the short term without a change in services, but in the longer term, a more sustainable solution was needed.
On the plus side, the council had just had confirmation that it would receive a £3.2m grant from the government towards de-carbonising estate.
But Cllr Burton warned: “Money is blooming tight.” He expected that in the current climate other sources of income might also “dry up”, and the council would have to be vigilant, especially as the need to supply temporary housing for the homeless had ballooned over the last year, as had its cost.
However, he said the budget contained a “very ambitious” capital programme, centred mainly on providing the 1,000 affordable homes target that the borough had set itself. None of the opposition parties lodged any amendments to the budget, and indeed the leaders of the Lib Dems, Labour, and Fant and Oakwood Independent groups, all supported it. The only dissent came from Cllr Stuart Jeffery, leader of the Green Party, who said he disagreed with several provisions its property
in the budget but knew that any amendments he suggested “would likely not sit well with other councillors”.
He did ask, when the council was increasing charges on most of its services, why parking fees had not been increased in line with inflation. He said that maintaining the level of parking charges unaltered was “another subsidy for the motorist”.
Cllr Burton said he was proud that the council had been able to set the budget without “going to the humble motorist and milking them, just to prop it up”.
Only two of the 48 councillors present voted against the budget – Cllr Jeffery and Cllr Tony Harwood (Lib Dem). Cllr Maureen Cleator (Lab) abstained despite earlier saying she supported it.
A 3% increase brings the borough council’s share of council tax to £292.95 for the so-called “average” Band D property. But that is not the end of the story. Along with its own share, the borough council also collects the precepts for KCC (£1,377), for adult social care (£233), for the police (£256) and for the fire authority (£90), and the precepts for parish councils in those areas that are classified as parished.
The parish precepts vary widely from just £28.42 in Boughton Malherbe, to £170.99 in Headcorn.
So the average Band D resident will pay £2,249.95 in council tax overall. That represents a 4.7% increase on last year.
But residents will face a wide range of charges according to the size of the property they are living in.
Those in the smallest, Band A, properties, will pay £1,499.89, while those in the largest Band H properties will pay £4,499.66.