This week in your ‘Super Soaraway Sun Bridgwater Mercury’, reporter Seth Dellow has run a piece saying Bridgwater Town Council’s element of the Council tax COULD go up by ‘up to 40%’. His article is based on a defeated motion from Super Soaraway Tory Diogo Rodrigues claiming the Town Council rejected ‘consultation’. Needless to say, Social media was onto the glib headline and unsubstantiated content as soon as it was posted. Of course, the article failed to even ask the Labour Town Council for a comment and instead sought to ask…yes, Tory MP Ashley Fox. Then again, neither reporter nor MP were at the meeting. So, it’s round about now that we have decided we need to introduce a ‘Fact Check’ feature. This week Town Council Leader Brian Smedley sets the record straight on the Town’s precept.
Q DID YOU REJECT ‘CONSULTATION’ ON YOUR BUDGET?
Smedley; No. We rejected Diogo’s motion. We felt it was a malicious motion designed for a headline. If it was passed it would be ‘Diogo forces Council to consult’ if it was rejected it would be ‘Council rejects Diogo’s motion to consult’. The truth is that we already have consultation. The public can attend each and every meeting and speak at them. All papers are published on the website. We have a special committee dedicated to Finance, chaired by Councillor Mick Lerry, which tracks, monitors and scrutinises the budget. Even Councillor Lerry is held to account by a supporting triad of councillors (in this case Cllrs Solomon and Leavy) and…actually, even Diogo is on that committee. What of course neither Diogo nor Dellow mention is the content of my reply at the meeting where I said the following “This year is one of transition for us from a smaller parish council to a newer, larger council with more responsibilities and new budgets. This will require a year to settle in so that we fully understand how our budgets and systems work. However, we will take on board the content of the motion for consultation and in a longer run up to the budget set we will create a ‘Finance Forum’ where our partners (from Community groups, the unions, business etc) can engage in a proper consultation”. The other important thing to remember is that Diogo’s motion was designed to fail as the terms of the consultation were such that they couldn’t be met in the time scale. Obviously, they could be if we set up for next year, as we agreed to.
Q SO WILL YOU BE RAISING THE TAX BY 40% OR NOT?
Smedley– We haven’t voted on that yet and this is why Diogo’s motion was basically political in intent. County Council haven’t set their budget, and we didn’t at the time have the Government’s settlement figures nor our own tax base calculations, therefore the meeting of 12 December was not a tax set meeting. However, it is common knowledge that we have been working on figures going through the Community, Amenities and Finance committees for several months. The figure is likely to be 39% but the problem for headline grabbing stories like this is that when expressed ‘in % terms’ that’s just designed to scare people. If you look at in real terms the absolute majority of Bridgwater’s 17,000 council tax payers are in the lowest bands A and B (that’s almost 14,000 people) and so will be asked for between £1 and £2 extra a week for Town Council services, which of course include keeping the parks and gardens open, keeping the streets clean and running the community buildings such as the Recreation Community Centre in Hamp, the Town Hall, the Bridgwater Arts Centre plus next year we will be taking on the Rollercoaster Youth centre down in Sydenham. The job of a town council is to balance what is needed by the community with how to pay for that. Your council tax pays for those services. Look at what you spend on your own personal outgoings each week, food, electricity, rent and so on. Your Town Council services are part of your home and community budget and we’re saying that’ll come to about a fiver a week. And of course many people will get a lot of that reduced anyway.
Q-WHEN THEY SET PRECEPTS, THEY FOCUS ON BAND D. WON’T THEY BE HIT THE HARDEST?
Smedley -Properties are graded so that people pay what they can afford. This is obviously a redistributive system. The richer pay more. When council tax precepts are set, they do take band D as the average, but this isn’t the average at all. In Bridgwater of 17,560 dwellings only 803 are band D. The 4 higher bands E, F, G and H amount to 454 altogether. When Bridgwater Town Council sets its tax we mainly look at the affect on the lower bands as A,B and C total 16,303 of our dwellings. That’s 93%.
Q IS THIS HAPPENING EVERYWHERE THEN?
Smedley; Bridgwater is a growing town and our tax base has increased but crucially we don’t have the big money homes that other towns have. Whereas Bridgwater has just 803 band D dwellings, Taunton has 3,666, Yeovil 1177 and smaller Frome has 1,746. These towns are aically at an advantage. Everywhere Towns and Parishes are adapting to the new system with the districts gone and are in transition as they take on services, assets and workers
Q LAST YEAR THE TOWN HAD A MASSIVE TAX HIKE AND YOU SAID YOU WOULDN’T BE DOING THAT AGAIN. SO, WHAT’S HAPPENED?
Smedley – Last year local government changed in Somerset. The new Unitary authority (Somerset Council) was created to replace the district councils (in our case Sedgemoor). The Tories who urged these changes said there would be an £18million benefit from going unitary. That just wasn’t true. Very quickly when the Lib Dems got into power at County Hall, they found that the reality was massive debt and at once started on a programme of savings, sale of assets and job cuts. One of the main reasons for this was that the Tories when they were in control at county hall had kept the precept unrealistically low while their government pursued a policy of austerity. That just meant they were building up problems for the future, which we’re now having to find ways to pay for. The one saving grace was the opportunity for smaller councils, the Towns and Parishes to step in and save the services local to them. This ‘devolution option’ was jumped at by us here in Bridgwater. For as long as Sedgemoor existed, we weren’t in control of our own destiny here and that’s been the case since 1974. To get back that autonomy for Bridgwater was crucial. In reality what has happened is that Bridgwater (and other towns and parishes) have been stepping in to replace the district councils. This has meant a re-alignment of the taxes. You no longer pay to Sedgemoor, but those services still have to be delivered and paid for. This is why Bridgwater moved in to deliver those services, save those jobs, protect those buildings. The % of your council tax bill has always been 85% to county and that’s still the case, except with no Sedgemoor the 15% now goes to Town. That means we keep it local, we save the services, we protect jobs.
Q BRIDGWATER’S TORY MP ASHLEY FOX SAYS THAT TOWN COUNCILS ARE BEING FORCED TO PICK UP SERVICES AT A STAGGERING COST TO TAX PAYERS. DOES HE HAVE A POINT?
Smedley – Well, he would have if he was directing his criticism at the former Conservative Government and county council but I suspect he isn’t. The Tory government’s since 2010 have devastated services, reduced funding to local government and compelled them to add costs at local level which were unrealistic. The Conservatives are thankfully out of office both nationally and at county level and have the luxury of sitting on the side pointing at the mess they left and pretending it wasn’t them. In fact picking up the services is proportionally cost effective because of the devolution package we have negotiated. You can clearly see now that Town has simply replaced district and is doing the job more locally and more efficiently. So if that’s what he means yea he’s right (but I expect he doesn’t mean that….)