Unsustainable rises in council tax bills simply cannot be justified

THE problem with soaring inflation and raging energy prices rises is that they affect everyone – and, when costs go up and the funds available to meet essential needs don’t rise in tandem, gaps appear.

A yawning gap has opened up in the budgets of local councils across the land. In Devon and Cornwall – with special pressures that have already put local authorities under pressure – that gap is particularly wide. Just a few weeks ago, Devon County Council leader John Hart said the authority’s finances were in as perilous a position as he had ever seen them.

So the warning yesterday from the

Local Government Association that fixing the problem will take a 20% hike in council tax is no idle bid for extra funding.

LGA chairman James Jamieson, who made the warning, wasn’t doing so, however, in the expectation local councils would get the go-ahead to push up council tax bills by a fifth – or expecting the Government, using national taxes, to provide the missing funds. He was simply illustrating the scale of the problem facing public services, as ministers try to balance the books and avoid adding unbearable financial burdens to already very hard-hit families.

What was clear from his assessment, that 20% increases in council tax would be needed over two years to make up the shortfall, is that we all face some tough choices.

Instead of trying to spread an everdiminishing portion of jam across the whole of the public sector – from local authorities to the Ministry of Defence – we are going to have to decide what must have the money and what can go without, at least for a time.

Taking those sorts of decisions is no fun, but it is what politicians, from ministers to parish councillors, have to do. And it is plain that in coming up with a set of priorities someone, somewhere, is going to be bitterly disappointed. Every crisis, however, brings an opportunity. And while everyone on the receiving end of taxpayers’ money can make a case for that income to continue to flow in, there is no doubt in some areas funding has been taken for granted when its justification is more difficult to accept, especially in a time of ever tighter belts.

It is not for the Western Morning News to say where those priorities should lie. But PM Rishi Sunak’s decision yesterday to increase the number of Type 26 Royal Navy frigates being built on the Clyde to eventually be based in Plymouth looks like a sensible move. Especially so in the light of growing threats in an extremely unstable world. A government’s first priority is to ensure the safety and security of its people.

There are other priorities, from health and social care to education for which a very strong case can be made. There are others which will deserve to come under much greater scrutiny and may have to pay the price.

What’s abundantly clear is that local councils – and those who receive their services – are going to have to make sacrifices, like everyone else. No one can afford a 20% council tax rise. We have to face the cuts.