Is bigger council tax rise likely?
Borough: Authority allowed to up bills by five per cent
The Royal Borough will have the option to increase council tax bills by five per cent from next year following a change in the rules.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement announced that local authorities would be allowed to increase council tax by up to five per cent a year from April 2023 without a referendum.
Currently, a local vote is triggered if councils want to raise council tax by more than two per cent. They can also raise it by a further one per cent for social care.
From April, councils will be allowed to raise council tax by three per cent. They can increase the social care precept by a further two per cent.
Most English councils are expected to raise council tax by the full five per cent, according to the Treasury.
But the Local Government Association (LGA) has said that a 20 per cent council tax rise would be needed over the next two years to plug the ‘local government funding gap.’
Many local services face ‘severe cutbacks’ due to spiralling costs caused by inflation and demand pressures, it warned.
Councillor David Hilton, the Borough’s cabinet member for finance, said that despite a general increase in costs across the board, the council is going into next year ‘in reasonable shape.’
“We managed our way through [COVID-related income loss] and I have every expectation we’ll come out of it in reasonable shape, without a deficit,” he said.
He said over the past three years, the borough’s finance team has been ‘significantly
strengthened’.
But leader of the local independents, Cllr Lynne Jones, said that based on last year’s figures, she doesn’t think the council has much choice but to up council tax to the new maximum – and that, even if it does, the council will still struggle.
“I can’t see that they can afford not to do it, given the financial situation we’re in,” she said. “We’ve been on a knife edge for three years, four years, just scraping into a balanced budget with millions [of pounds] of cuts every year.
“The budget will be an officers’ budget, really, because it can’t be anything else. Whatever happens, savings are going to have to be made – and when you’re looking at savings, you’re looking at cuts.”
As such, she expects nonstatutory services to be affected.
However, Cllr Hilton told the Advertiser that the council will ‘continue to focus on delivering discretionary services’ such as libraries.
“We’ve made sure those haven’t taken the hit, so the sorts of services that residents rely upon will still be delivered to the same levels as the past,” he said.
“Anything from parking to libraries, parks and gardens – a green Windsor and Maidenhead is important to people.”
Another change moving forwards is a focus on saving costs in adult social care by supporting the elderly in their own homes.
“Over 70 per cent of the council’s budget is spent on adult social care and children’s services. Clearly this is a significant amount,” said Cllr Hilton.
At the moment, older people are often discharged from hospitals into care homes – which is ‘probably the biggest issue in adult social care’.
“People have gone into care homes earlier than they might otherwise have done,” said Cllr Hilton.
“Once they go into care homes, very few ever come out. So we have a significant number of older people in care homes above the number that we budgeted for.
“It’s roughly £800 to £1,000 a week. You can see that this eats up money. We’ve got about 40 more people in care homes than budgeted.”
Cllr Hilton wished to stress that, even with an increased council tax, Windsor and Maidenhead would remain a local authority with one of the lowest rates in the country.
“Anyone who lives in Windsor and Maidenhead and pays B and D council tax is going to pay £300 a year less than if they lived in Bracknell Forest. [It’s] significantly more in Reading and even more still in Wokingham,” he said.
“We are as concerned as Government is about the cost-of-living crisis. What we are doing through having a low level of council tax is leaving more money in people’s pockets. And it would be very wrong if that is not taken into account.”
More information on the council’s financial future will come when the council’s draft budget is released in time for a meeting set for Thursday, December 1.