Surrey Advertiser: Council must explain themselves

Dear Sir,

Council Taxpayers in Surrey will shortly be receiving their Council Tax bills in the post for 2008/9. Although the respective Borough Councils will be making the demand for payment, it is the precept from Surrey County Council (at 4.8%) and, to a lesser extent, the Police and Fire Services that constitute the majority of the bill.

The increase this year, as most people will soon know, is a little bit under 5% which, coincidentally, is also the ‘limit’ at which the Government has capped Councils in general.

The Consumer Price Index is currently 2.1% and Local Government has imposed pay settlements upon its employees of  2% (salaries and associated benefits such as Pensions form the bulk of the Councils expenditure).  The Direct Grant from Government has I believe increased by 3% and whilst it is true that other costs, such as energy have increased greatly, they only constitute a small proportion of total expenditure.

Can households on lower incomes afford to pay an extra 4.8% on their Council Tax bill?  This of course on top of the stupendous increases of 11% and 18% in successive years in the earlier part of this decade, and in other years increases of twice the then rate of inflation.

On behalf of Council Taxpayers in Surrey, I would like to ask Nick Skellett, the Leader of the Council, to set out precisely his reasons for wanting to extract a rise in the Precept that is considerably more than any increase 99% of Taxpayers will receive in either their wages or pension payments. But of course the money has to be found to pay the salaries and other benefits of positions such as the three recently appointed ‘Relationship Managers’ at £65,000 each!

I hope that the Surrey Advertiser will allow Mr Skellett a platform to let Surrey Taxpayers decide whether or not they can be satisfied with what they are about to be charged.  Once we have his reply I would then suggest that the Advertiser commissions a poll to ask Taxpayers if they think that the increase this year is justified. 

Yours sincerely

Stephen Bowers

Surrey Tax Action Group and TaxPayers' Alliance Member