[Broncho]

Received the demand today, it's gone up 7%, that I can handle, I'm not poor nor am I rich but yes I can afford the extra £17 sheets a month but our council is doing this whilst selling off green belt, reducing bin collections from what was every week to every 3 weeks.

Our road is now like something in Romania from the 80's, plus our council leader is a big fat cunt, I'm sure the money is going on his dinners.

[Hooded]

Originally Posted by Broncho

Received the demand today, it's gone up 7%, that I can handle, I'm not poor nor am I rich but yes I can afford the extra £17 sheets a month but our council is doing this whilst selling off green belt, reducing bin collections from what was every week to every 3 weeks.

Our road is now like something in Romania from the 80's, plus our council leader is a big fat cunt, I'm sure the money is going on his dinners.

That's the thing.. you don't mind paying the extra £17 .. if your bins are emptied on time every week, there's police patrolling the area looking for the scum trying to break into cars and houses and the roads are well maintained!

[JLR1969]

£2800 a year and it's increased by 5% it's the norm now to increase by 5% every year.

[teaston]

My sisters friends in Leicestershire has just gone up by 20%!!

[Broncho]

Originally Posted by teaston

My sisters friends in Leicestershire has just gone up by 20%!!

Is the service any better?

[isleaiw1]

£2800 here too and up 6%, biggest increase for police commissioner. Fine by me if it's vfm but too many public services are wasting money on too many layers of over paid mgt. mind you private sector probably no better....

Probably more of a concern is how they try and get a 1991 valuation for a house built last year - we are in next to top band for a house on an estate... there are a lot of more valuable (in today's market) houses in the area, I assume they are in a higher band? I may start some research...

[AndyMD]

Up 6% where we are. Again we are out in the sticks and they have reduced the amount going to our parish. However, there are 3 building projects going on at he moment in our 'village' totalling 250 new houses - the cheapest being £420,000!

[Darth Helmut]

Has anyone asked for an audit of their local authorities and specifically asking the questions of why its gone up and what value for money you are getting? If they fob you off or bombard you with corporate speak bollocks, keep pestering the fuckers. Get them to give you a comparison from 10 years ago to today and get them to break down each item. If they again fail to do so, remind them who they work for and who allows them to be in such a position. At least it will get a couple of fat fuckers in the council doing their job of working for the people they represent. FOI.

In reality, local councils/authorities are made up of people that aren't capable of hacking it in the real world and take the piss through ignorance/incompetence. And clearly the government are impassive towards the overly inflated house pricing bollocks due to the revenue sought from council tax. A 5 bed detached property in Lincoln costs half the price of a 2 up/2 down in or near the smoke. Yes, a binmans cost of living and wages are higher but that in itself is another debate.

Should it be tied to the value of a property? (one reason why I dont bother to own a property in the UK...). Is it fairer than the old rates system? And why do terminally unemployed/unemployable not have to pay? Why the fuck am I paying three times for their lifestyle choice? (Benefits, NHS and council tax).

[scotgc]

Originally Posted by Darth Helmut

Has anyone asked for an audit of their local authorities and specifically asking the questions of why its gone up and what value for money you are getting? If they fob you off or bombard you with corporate speak bollocks, keep pestering the fuckers. Get them to give you a comparison from 10 years ago to today and get them to break down each item. If they again fail to do so, remind them who they work for and who allows them to be in such a position. At least it will get a couple of fat fuckers in the council doing their job of working for the people they represent. FOI.

In reality, local councils/authorities are made up of people that aren't capable of hacking it in the real world and take the piss through ignorance/incompetence. And clearly the government are impassive towards the overly inflated house pricing bollocks due to the revenue sought from council tax. A 5 bed detached property in Lincoln costs half the price of a 2 up/2 down in or near the smoke. Yes, a binmans cost of living and wages are higher but that in itself is another debate.

Should it be tied to the value of a property? (one reason why I dont bother to own a property in the UK...). Is it fairer than the old rates system? And why do terminally unemployed/unemployable not have to pay? Why the fuck am I paying three times for their lifestyle choice? (Benefits, NHS and council tax).

Spot on, couldn't agree more

[Nobby Clark]

Originally Posted by Darth Helmut

And why do terminally unemployed/unemployable not have to pay? Why the fuck am I paying three times for their lifestyle choice? (Benefits, NHS and council tax).

This.
But I’ll probably get shot down by, what the trendy phrase? Ah yes, the “snowflakes” because they are entitled.

[Darth Helmut]

Originally Posted by Nobby Clark

This.
But I’ll probably get shot down by, what the trendy phrase? Ah yes, the “snowflakes” because they are entitled.

But they also have the vote. Blair was akin to a drug dealer in how he pandered to the feckless.... Its become almost irreversible.

We maybe should go back to the old way of entitlement to vote. A minimum income and a certain social standing should allow you to vote. After all, those that pay in should be allowed a bigger voice? Being in capitalist democracy is almost an oxymoron. The UK is not either.

[aquazi]

I live in Sutton Coldfield, tax up 10% and thats after last year we had no bins collected for 4 months after birmingham city council refuge had their industrial action.

What compensation what given then? ..... none as they valued individual collections at pennies.... yet on the breakdown of the price increase due to refuge is worth 7% of the total bill.

Absolute joke!

[BnB]

Aren't the inflation+ tax hikes for residents a consequence of reduced council funding from central government? I'm a true blue Tory before you all jump down my throat, but this seems an obvious explanation.

[AndyEssex330d]

Originally Posted by BnB

Aren't the inflation+ tax hikes for residents a consequence of reduced council funding from central government? I'm a true blue Tory before you all jump down my throat, but this seems an obvious explanation.

It simply forced the council to better manage their money, rather than ask for more. They seem to be inflation raises but 3% vs 20% in some cases is disgusting. All new housing developments; they simply outsource the management to an outdoor management company anyway and so residents pay even more. We get weekly bin collections still though, unless there is a leaf in the road or a snow flake then they shit themselves.

[AndyTo]

Originally Posted by Darth Helmut

Should it be tied to the value of a property? (one reason why I dont bother to own a property in the UK...). Is it fairer than the old rates system? And why do terminally unemployed/unemployable not have to pay? Why the fuck am I paying three times for their lifestyle choice? (Benefits, NHS and council tax).

I don't know anyone that thinks council tax should should be linked to property value, especially considering how house prices have evolved since 1991, however look what happened when Thatcher tried to make a fairer system when the tax was linked to being an adult, so 6 adults in a house generating 6 times the waste of a single occupancy property paid 6 times more... Its a toxic subject for any politician so can't see it changing anytime soon.

Ours has gone up 4.9%, which reading others doesn't seem too bad, reading the breakdown its only the Police that are having an above inflation rise which i don't have a problem with, I do have a problem with paying just under £2900 when in our old house just round the corner was half that yet it was the same people using the same services, just because we wanted to stretch ourselves to get a nice house by making other sacrifices, shouldn't mean we have to subsidise others.

[Tengocity]

Originally Posted by isleaiw1

£2800 here too and up 6%, biggest increase for police commissioner. Fine by me if it's vfm but too many public services are wasting money on too many layers of over paid mgt. mind you private sector probably no better....

Probably more of a concern is how they try and get a 1991 valuation for a house built last year - we are in next to top band for a house on an estate... there are a lot of more valuable (in today's market) houses in the area, I assume they are in a higher band? I may start some research...

My biggest issue is similar to your last point in that the bands are spread across the bottom end of the range of house prices, and so once you hit what amounts to little more than a nice detached family home you've hit the top band. So folk who are decent earners, like most of us on this forum, but not particularly wealthy are paying pretty much the max, yet those who are properly well off, and sitting in the nicest housing stock are paying no more, yet have properties that are considerably more valuable.

I'm all for the tax being progressive, but that makes more sense if it actually is.

[goodbyalfa]

6% here, forest heath. I did notice in the break down that the local parish contribution went up 30%!!!!

[Herr Dreier]

I think part of the problem is that most councils aren't transparent about their costs.

The largest cost to any council is Social Care - that means nursing homes and home care (amongst other things). The problem is that the government introduced the National Living Wage which massively increased the pay to the carers. This cost has to be covered and the cost of care has therefore gone up by at least 20% over the last 3 years. Plus more and more people are needing care. Given the Government hasn't increased council funding, they need to get some of that from other cuts and some from us.

From my point of view (as someone in the industry), the councils should be increasing council tax further (being honest, explaining, holding referendums as required) as they are pushing local care providers out of business, or to just focus on privately funded care, both of which will have a further impact.

Agree the tax needs reforming though. I suspect we'll see in a couple of years time when the councils are allowed to keep the business rates that this is where the tax increases will come from as businesses don't have a vote -- not directly anyway.

[Broncho]

Following advice from here, which would be the first time ever I'm going to ask for a full itemised breakdown of how they spend the money, in fact I might just troll them for a bit, I'm exceptional at that

[GEP77]

Originally Posted by goodbyalfa

6% here, forest heath. I did notice in the break down that the local parish contribution went up 30%!!!!

I had a similar thing happen a few years ago.

The parish council was challenged and ultimately were unable to justify first the amount of the rise and secondly the projects that were intended to be funded with the rise in the precept - one of which was not even located in the parish.

It ultimately ended up in a vote of no confidence in the council. This then triggered a mass resignation of the parish council. The only previous member to stand again got the lowest number of votes. Subsequent to this the precept for the parish council has been reduced substantially and there has been a significant improvement in the services provided by the parish. In addition the parish council still has a significant reserve that can cope with any unexpected bills.

[Kal101]

It’s basically a licence to rob - you have no recourse or choice but to pay or face the consequences

It’s based on house value imho as it allows them to say we’re getting the more affluent rich sods to pay their way and we’re looking after the common man( but like the new car road tax £40k hike) who doesn’t own a mansion.

Is it fair ,again I don’t think so 5 people living in a smaller house will probably use the services more as opposed to a single person in a large house.

Again do the councils HAVE to provide VFM or have any accountability- no !!

There’s been plenty of projects in my neck of the woods,which have probably made things a lot worse- never been justified or anyone held to account.

Other issue is again there’s no incentive for the council to save/ underspend on allocated budgets.

[Marksw76]

They bleet on about losing money from central government, but as someone else has said, this just means they should be doing more to manage it better.

A lot of the problem also stems from the fact that many of the decision makers have never worked outside of the public sector so are used to receiving handouts from central government rather than thinking commercially.

For example, where I live, there's a disused council building in the city centre with an empty car park, room for about 20-30 cars. Parking in the city is in extremely short supply and in demand. Why can some bright spark not see the opportunity of making money on contract parking. 30 cars x £70 p/month = £25k + a year. It really is that simple.

But no, what will probably end up happening is they'll either leave it empty (most likely) or make into a council staff car park and then raise retailers business rates up to pay for the added staff benefit.