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Herefordshire Council Tax Expected to Rise 4.9%


Colin James

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Herefordshire council tax expected to rise by 4.9%!

 

This is the maximum amount it can rise without the local authority triggering a referendum.

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Herefordshire Council’s Cabinet will consider the draft 2018/19 budget next Friday (12 January 2018), which includes proposals for 2018/19 Council Tax rates. Cabinet will then make recommendations to Full Council for approval on 26 January 2018.
 
Consideration of the draft budget will take into account central government’s proposals for the local government financial settlement (announced 19 December 2017), which includes:
 
75% of business rate income to be retained by Herefordshire Council from 2020/21
The ability to increase the core Council Tax requirement by an additional 1% without a local referendum
The 2018/19 draft budget assumes a 1.9% general increase in Council Tax plus an increase of 3% to the adult social care precept. A total Council Tax increase of 4.9% is proposed in the draft budget, although it is open to Cabinet to recommend alternative spending proposals or strategies.
 
Herefordshire Council’s Cabinet Member for Finance, Housing and Corporate Services, Councillor Nigel Shaw, said:
“Herefordshire Council continues to face financial pressures due to the increased demand on the county’s adult social care system and children’s services. We have a large proportion of people over retirement age in the county and this puts pressure on our health and social care services.
 
“Central government has recognised the effect that inflation has had on the cost of providing council services, as well as the significant pressures that affect adult social care. With the loss of all government funding by 2020, we need to look at other ways to pay for the services the council delivers and make savings where we can. Residents everywhere will have noticed changes to the services we deliver, although we have sought to maintain and enhance the delivery of our statutory responsibilities through improved efficiency and methods of working.  
 
“Meanwhile it is more important than ever to attract more opportunity to the county. The new university will attract more young people alongside related businesses and services, while the continued improvement of the city unlocks development potential, such as that seen on the newly opened City Link Road.  
 
“I have no doubt that the Cabinet will want to further consider the additional options that the provisional local government finance settlement makes possible and will make appropriate recommendations to the full Council.”
 
Cabinet will also discuss updates to the Medium Term Financial Strategy (which outlines spending, savings and contingency planning until 2020/21), and will make recommendations to Council for approval on 26 January 2018.
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As always they trot out the usual excuse for our current fiscal plight. The ageing population! Completely ignoring the other plain to see factor that's staring everyone in the face they always take the opportunity to remind us that it's the fault of the ageing population.

No matter that this ageing population fought to free Europe from German tyranny! It's of no consequence nowadays that these same ageing people have spent their entire working lives paying in to fund our public services. It's simply easier and more convenient to apportion blame to the ageing population and imply they're all living much to long.

This same ageing population who Post War helped build millions of Council homes for its people, created the National Health Service for its people,reconstructed West Germany for their people who helped sixty million people lose their lives, repaid the Americans who supplied our ageing population with weapons to fight the War and created a society that was modern and caring, the ageing population suddenly find themselves to blame for our hard won overstretched public services.

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Bobby , your comment is , to my ageing mind so true , as an aside you omitted to include that the ageing population make up the majority of volunteers giving up their free time to support Charities . Going on from that if the ageing population did not do charitable work who would fill the gap because there would be a gap ?

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The ageing population also do an awful of foc caring work - they ARE the unsung heroes.  Why are young single Mums or out of work youngsters living in accommodation never highlighted? I know I know I will get shot down for that last sentence but everybody is entitled to their opinion.

 

The Cabinet consists of one or two of the dreaded expensive ageing population

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3/4 of the Council Cabinet are The Ageing Population!

New blood is what is required, but they can’t get in.......

 

Then you have the ‘out of town retirees’ ditching the big smog to see out their days in out beautiful county. Fair enough they’ve done their deeds and paid their dues, but Herefordshire is a lot cheaper to retire into than London Oxford and the like, does it not make sense to?

Those apartments on the new bridge, you wouldn’t get a garage for that price in London, nice retirement apartment though- cheap if you sold your London pad!

 

A friend has recently bought a modest 4bed house large garden etc, off Aylestone Hill for less than a quarter of what they paid for their London 2bed flat with no garden. They couldn’t believe how cheap the properties are here! And here is the problem. Hereford is an ideal property hotspot for wealthy retiree southerners. Two/three properties for the sale of my tiny London pad........ let me think.....

 

Shame we don’t have the same wages as other larger cities.

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A long while back I placed an FOI to the Council asking them what proactive steps they'd taken to discover the 'hidden population' of our County. To actually learn what the true figures are that are living here but not paying any Council Tax you'd think would be essential to all our public services so that they could approach this issue and begin to think and plan strategically for the now and for the future.

I learned, not unsurprisingly, that the information they totally rely upon is that which is gleaned from the Census. Despite the era of Partnerships, where everyone is able to share information with one another, and I have in mind individual registrations with Doctor Surgeries, our local public agents have not done as Malaga in Spain have done. Exchange information, collate their findings to discover their hidden population. In Malaga, Spain they've recently discovered that their regional population, which they themselves have called their hidden population, is over half a million higher than their previous estimations.

They discovered this startling fact by using Refuse Collection figures, registrations at Medical Services and information gathered from a raft of other agents who have contact with their general public. They were able to do this so why can't we?

The answer is, and I assure you it's completely true. They don't wish to do it because once it's done and once they've discovered the true population figures residential in our County, the results would become open to public scrutiny and people like me could use FOI and release the information to the reading public.

In short, they don't want to know and have no intention of ever knowing. Whilst they don't know and can honestly say 'we don't know', they can bumble on ignoring the Elephant In The Room and blame everything on the ageing population. Thats the truth and you'd do well to believe it.

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4.9% increase in council tax is akin to daylight robbery the fact that wages have stagnated means that more & more people will struggle in paying there council tax which will ultimately lead to other problems in itself.

 

Thou I have no love for the council dictatorship,this all stems from central governments cutbacks…forcing more responsibility on them the LA to find the cash to fund services…it's as if the government see the pleps as cash cows to milk whenever it suits them? but yet they the government have income from us which runs into billions of pounds,from one tax or another…so where does all of that revenue go? If I didn't now better I'd say the treasury is incompetent with our money either that or its rife with corruption?!

 

But these rate rises are unsustainable if they carry on like this year in year on…but what to do about it is the question?…but the answer may not be so pretty ,I'd say people need to get proactive & start getting out on the streets to protested against such decision making from our government & put an end to this preposterous austerity to vital services!

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Chatting to a male in his 20s the other day in a pub....he has 4 children by , guess what , 4 different girls and his present girl friend is expecting a child . Has he got a job , not worth it , it's Benefit for him .

 

Some might think I made up this story , I can assure you that it's the truth .

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Chatting to a male in his 20s the other day in a pub....he has 4 children by , guess what , 4 different girls and his present girl friend is expecting a child . Has he got a job , not worth it , it's Benefit for him .

 

Some might think I made up this story , I can assure you that it's the truth .

 

I also know a few people who just produce kids in order to claim the benefits. Why should I pay my tax to support other peoples children? If they cannot afford to have children then they should not have them in the first place did they not hear about contraception?  I agree with Katie Hopkins on this front.

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The UK government is screwing its citizens by cutting off funding for local authorities - in 2015/16, councils received £9.9bn in Revenue Support Grant (RSG) and by 2019/20, they will get only £2.2bn. Half of the authorities will go bankrupt. If we don't get out of the EU completely I predict that by the next election plans to do away with local authorities will place us all in regions under the control of unelected EU bureaucrats (officials who works by fixed routine without exercising intelligent judgment) and we will be screwed again for ever. Already there are plans underway to form an EU army to which we have quietly agreed to contribute and also an EU treasury which will milk citizens and businesses with taxes.

 

It will be interesting to hear what Nigel Farage has to say with his meeting tomorrow with Mr Barnier.

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Actually Megilleland, there will not be a Herefordshire Council in 25/30 years time. Herefordshire will send 6/8 elected representatives to the West Midland Regional government, and the parish councils in the county will Be much larger, with budgets, who will deliver the services they could deliver now. ( Parish Councils can control allotments, car parks, cemeteries, and a number of other responsibilities, although this is likely to change over the years)

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No not that soon. There isn’t a regional parliament yet and Herefordshire is only a sub region. We need to fight it as long as possible which is one reason why so much economic, structural and cultural building is happening now. We have to be prepared to stand up for ourselves when we join the ‘big’ boys cause Herefordshire is seen as small fry although we bunch above our weight.

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