Before I became a Councillor in 2019, I had no understanding of what council tax was and how it was calculated, I just knew it had to be paid. I’m no longer a Cllr. Last week the Labour government opened the door to allow RBWM to make a correction but this has opened up a whole new can of worms.
I just felt the need to explain what I know and suggest that making the correction, in my opinion, is the most sensible thing we can do for the benefit of the community.
When I became a Cllr the first thing I did was look at the budget figures for Dedworth. I sat down with the then CEO and asked a bunch of questions and qualified that the reason RBWM were £30m behind the curve was all to do with the pretence that zero increase in council tax is good… but what’s it really good for, absolutely nothing!
The table above shows how the story went, with no increase for years… only latterly putting up the council tax to the maximum allowed by the government after recognising the error of their ways.
When you dig a little deeper, the reality was, when it came to extra funding from central government for various projects, those councils who had not put up the council tax by the maximum allowed were believed to have a slush fund, a magic money tree, they could access and so didn’t need the extra support. A double whammy!
This deficit has grown as the cost of things has increased, especially when it comes to funding for taking care of older people moving into long term care and the increasing diagnosis of younger people, defining needs that local councils have to pay for, costing millions.
It would seem, this past behaviour which put RBWM in a £30 million whole has been doubled by the new Labour funding system, the formulas putting us essentially into a £60 million hole. Which would seemingly have been a £0 position had those in power in the past just followed government guidelines.
Under the current system the only way to have a significant increase in council tax is either by the council declaring they can’t meet their financial commitments for next year, declaring a Section 114 and the government allowing a reset, or by referendum, which would never see the residents voting for a higher figure.
The government, recognising problems across the UK, as I see it, are trialing if councils can reset their budgets into a working position. The problem is, asking Cllrs to do something that might impact votes negatively is not going to be popular. It’ll be interesting to see how many Cllrs champion tidying up the finances.
A quick calculation indicates this would likely need to be a 25% increase each year, or £500 a year on a band D, currently around £1800.
As I recall when we lived in Devon, for a couple of years we paid £1,000 more a year than we had in Windsor.
It’s painful but essential for the community at large, especially if we want to see our elderly looked after properly and for our young people to get the best possible start in life.
Those in real need will be subsidised.
Thank you.
Jon Davey
Community Champion
