1:06pm Wednesday 25th November 2009
By Simon Crump
THE average Cotswold resident faces a 2.5 per cent district council tax increase during the next financial year, representing an increase of £3.53 per year or slightly less than 7p per week.
This proposed increase for the average band D council taxpayer is part of Cotswold District Council’s draft 2010/11 budget, devised at a meeting of its cabinet.
The council’s Conservative administration claims it has produced a positive budget, despite unprecedented financial pressures inflicted by lower returns on investments and a reduction in the government grant and other income.
It says the increase is lower than the previous year’s and the 3.5 per cent figure envisaged for 2010/11.
The budget includes £500,000 for flood alleviation schemes and £100,000 for maintaining and improving community halls and providing youth recreational facilities.
It also includes funding for disabled people’s facilities and the Citizens Advice Bureau.
The cabinet also proposes making efficiency and service savings of almost £1 million, while maximising investment opportunities to ensure adequate levels of reserves.
The council will consult the public about these proposals and will feed its findings into the budget strategy report that councillors will consider in January 2010.
Council Leader, Coun Lynden Stowe, described the proposals as “a prudent budget strategy but with good news for Cotswold residents”.
He said: “We understand that, in the current economic climate, it’s important to the people of the Cotswolds to keep the council tax increase to the minimum and we are striving to do this, despite the derisory level of funding received from the government, which makes keeping our costs down even harder.”
Coun Paul Hodgkinson, Liberal Democrat leader on the council, said the tax rise would be a “real-terms” increase because it would be “massively” over the Retail Price Index.
He said: “There are a whole number of things this administration has done which haven’t been prudent at all - a £1 million overspend on the waste budget and £2 million lost in Icelandic banks.”
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