Council Tax rise is no surprise

19 March 2008

NO SURPRISES again this year regarding Council Tax. The increase in Worcestershire County Council’s Council Tax take will again exceed the official rate of inflation, and a Band D property owner is being asked to cough up £984.77 for 2008/9.
As Council Tax is paid out of taxed income, a household paying the basic rate of tax and NICs has to earn a gross salary of some £1,400 just to pay the county council’s tax bill. And let’s not forget this is after the Government has given the council a grant of £150 per person out of our income tax. In 2007, average UK earnings were £23,764, which means that the average Joe, having spent 12 weeks working to pay the Government for income tax and NICs, will then have to work another three whole weeks to pay the county council, plus a further week to pay for his district council, police, fire authority and parish council. That’s four months before he can start to think about food, water, electricity, gas, a car, and holidays.
It is difficult to understand how the county council believes it can continue spending at this unsustainable rate.
Self-delusion, vanity and self-congratulation seem to be at the core of the problem if the fatuous, juvenile, patronising WoW Magazine, which fell out of the local paper is anything to go by.
When is the council going to get it into its collective head that it is not a multi-national fast moving consumer goods company generating turnover and profit, but a cost-based non-profit making service provider which needs to focus on providing a high level of service at minimum cost?
For a change, instead of employing a new Chief Executive with a background in the public sector and social work, bring in a David James (the commercial company doctor who was brought in to sort out the mess made by the 'public servants' who tried to run the Millennium Dome). There are plenty of them about!
We could then look forward to reductions in Council Tax, rather than incessant increases. One very obvious saving to a professional manager would be to axe the Marketing and Communications Unit at Worcestershire County Council, which produced the 'WoW'. Procter and Gamble, Unilever and Ford may be able to justify a Marketing and Communications Unit - but sure as a hell a county council cannot.

John Huband
Ashton-under-Hill

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