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 £1.4m from precept plus £904,000 ‘other’; a total of over £2.3m. Even with a two per cent ‘cap’ this means that it could still increase its precept by over £28,000 if it wished to.
More importantly though is where this money goes. In the case of Trowbridge Town Council, over £1.1m is spent on staff costs.
No one likes to see people made redundant, but this equates to nearly 50 per cent of their income – surely this should be looked at rather than hiking the council tax? Chippenham Town Council seems to have similar figures of £2.9m income with staff costs of £1.2m. (Oh, and £1.5m 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 hardworking taxpayer 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.
Ernie Clark
Wiltshire Councillor for Hilperton Division
Independent Group leader, Wiltshire Council