Council Tax Rise for 2005/2006 is Under 6%At the special Budget Meeting of the Council last evening (Thursday 3rd March 2005), a proposed Council Tax rise of 5·7% was decided. This was against a backdrop of the usual government underfunding plus yet more unfunded additional costs (including an enforced new Director-level post, though we managed to combine that with an existing position!).
This result is a far more remarkable achievement than anyone outside the council is ever likely to appreciate, and because of that it will be simplicity itself for opposition parties to put about a lot of mis-information. Indeed, they tried to do so (as expected) during the debtae on this budget.
Although the full figures are not yet verified (owing to almost last-minute changes, well after the Cabinet proposals were published), the Band D Council Tax will be £899·73 plus precepts—an increase of just 93 pence per week. This remains the lowest oevrall Council Tax of any unitary authority in the country, apart from the Isle of Wight (which has special circumstances).
Despite this, no services will be reduced and indeed there will be many new and enhanced services as a direct result of this budget. Nothing can be anywhere near ideal when local authorities are deliberately starved of funds as has been happening for several years now, but under the circumstances we here in Medway could hardly have done better. The opposition groups on the Council had little if anything useful to suggest, and history shows that Labour were unable to run the council's financial affairs when they were the adminsitration here.
Overall, we done good! There is a year-by-year table of Council Tax levels set by all Unitary Authirities nationwide in recent years on this website here.