Council Threatened with Capping
The government has formally threatened to place a cap on the Council Tax increases of by Medway Council and York Council, as the proposed rise is considered by them to be too high.
In fact, the capping criteria were again not announced beforehand, so we had to base our judgement on what Ministers told us, which was that this year's criteria would be much the same as last year. Interestingly, last year's increase here in Medway was a higher percentage than this year's but we weren't capped then...
This situation has arisen for a number of reasons, all clearly orchestrated by the government to force us into this predicament.
The two main reasons are an expectation of spend of some £73 million on areas of our work funded by their new Funding Share scheme (yes, another new funding scheme for local government!) but in the event funded by only £67 million, and a so-called clawback of a further million pounds.
Now, as each million pounds represents an additional 1·3% on our Council Tax, these moves by government should have put up our tax by 9% for these two reasons alone. The fact that we have kept the increase as low as we did is quite an astounding feat under these circumstances. No services were going to be cut.
Now, though, by being forced to reduce our Council Tax rise to just 5% (a difference, by the way, of just 9 pence per week at Band D) we shall lose almost £400,000 from this year's budget. We shall also have to re-bill every household in Medway, costing another chunk of money which will result in a further cut to service budgets.
Note that this situation is entirely down to central government scheming and manipulation. No-one else is to blame—at all.
Not only is the council appealing against the capping, we are also seeking leave for a Judicial Review in the High Court, as this whole business is unacceptable and must not go unchallenged at the highest level. We are also working closely with York Council, who of course face a similar situation to ours.
More news will be reported as this issue unfolds.