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District council to freeze its council tax

7:00am Thursday 23rd February 2012 in Headlines

WEST Oxfordshire District Council is to freeze its share of council tax and councillors’ allowances, and maintain free parking, in its budget for the next financial year.

The council also agreed to reduce a proposed 10 per cent cut to grants for groups such as Citizens’ Advice Bureau and Witney youth centre Base 33. The grants pot will be cut from £300,000 to £281,000.

The budget for 2012/13 received unanimous cross-party support at a full council meeting yesterday. Councillors rejected recommendations from an independent remuneration panel to increase basic allowances from £4,350 to £4,415 a year.

Council tax will be frozen, at £81.63p a year for a Band D property, free parking across the district will be maintained and there will be no increase in charges for taxi licences, market stallholders or trade waste disposal.

Comments(16)

Lord Palmerstone says...
7:46am Thu 23 Feb 12

Well done! A tiny candle flame in the pitch darkness of wartime levels of taxation which cripple this country. Talk not of "tax cuts"; talk of the end of emergency level taxation 67 years after the cessation of hostilities.

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bodchris says...
8:18am Thu 23 Feb 12

Well done WODC, I am proud of you, resisting the urge to charge your 'flock'.

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EMBOX1 says...
9:00am Thu 23 Feb 12

"Council tax will be frozen, at £81.63p a year for a Band D property"

I am paying over £1100 a year in SODC. Time to move, methinks ;-)

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Lady Penelopee says...
9:10am Thu 23 Feb 12

Well done WODC, especially with the free parking that attracts many visitors to the area.

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simplicissimus says...
9:18am Thu 23 Feb 12

Lord Palmerstone wrote:
Well done! A tiny candle flame in the pitch darkness of wartime levels of taxation which cripple this country. Talk not of "tax cuts"; talk of the end of emergency level taxation 67 years after the cessation of hostilities.
Hear! Hear!

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simplicissimus says...
9:21am Thu 23 Feb 12

EMBOX1 wrote:
"Council tax will be frozen, at £81.63p a year for a Band D property"

I am paying over £1100 a year in SODC. Time to move, methinks ;-)
Decimal point needs shifting 1 to the right. Compare this Tory run authority with Oxford shCity council, though.

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Danny A says...
10:13am Thu 23 Feb 12

We would be in a much better position if council tax had gone UP rather than VAT and employers NI.

Given that a huge house worth millions pays only three times that of a bedsit, the freezing of council tax, whilst other more avoidable taxes have gone up, puts the tax burden on the working poor instead of the idle rich.

And I don't want to hear any rubbish about "council tax paying for local services". Council tax only funds ~40% of Council expenditure, the rest comes from other taxes. And much of "local services" e.g. schools, hospitals, infrastructure, are funded by general taxation in any case.

To be really effective though, Council tax should be replaced with a real property (better still land) tax, whilst other taxes should be cut.

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WitneyGreen says...
11:05am Thu 23 Feb 12

EMBOX1 wrote:
"Council tax will be frozen, at £81.63p a year for a Band D property"

I am paying over £1100 a year in SODC. Time to move, methinks ;-)
The figure of £81.63 is only the district council's portion of the total bill. Once the County Council, Town Council, police and fire have added their portions, the bill for a Band D property in Witney is around £1400 a year.

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Lord Palmerstone says...
11:27am Thu 23 Feb 12

"We would be in a much better position if council tax had gone UP rather than VAT and employers NI."No we wouldn't. We would have been better off if Council Tax, employers NI and VAT had been brought to a more rational level and the state had stopped hosing our cash around like a drunk in the loo at closing time.

"Given that a huge house worth millions pays only three times that of a bedsit, the freezing of council tax, whilst other more avoidable taxes have gone up, puts the tax burden on the working poor instead of the idle rich"
Please spare us the Pravda rubbish from the 1950's. How many more dustbins do a family in a decent house put out than people in a bedsit? How much more street lighting do they use? All taxation has gone out of control and needs regularising.

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Danny A says...
1:21pm Thu 23 Feb 12

Lord P you clearly didn't even attempt to read or understand my comment.

Once again: most of the money for bin collection street lights comes from other taxes rather than council tax - fact.

Not all taxes are equally economically damaging. Taxes on land and property are less of a drag on the economy and social mobility than taxes on wages and enterprise. They also have the lowest avoidance rates.

I want a lower tax burden. But it is important for the burden that remains to be shifted from labour and business and on to property and land.

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simplicissimus says...
2:22pm Thu 23 Feb 12

While district councils overpay senior clerks (aka CEOs) and managers, there's an urgent need for far more severe pruning, but at the top, and to pay and perks, and most of the UK population want CT halved asap from levels reached under Labour (under whom they rose far faster than inflation, to around double 1997 levels).

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the wizard says...
11:36pm Fri 24 Feb 12

Hopefully a bit of stability will help retailers and the bonus of free parking continues to lure folk in from other areas. Seems its one of the few things we have right at the moment.

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Ruth Smith says...
3:47pm Sat 25 Feb 12

I'm disappointed in the Council. Their own online questionnaire made clear that an increase of just a few percent (a couple of pounds per household) would mean that cuts could be avoided.

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simplicissimus says...
4:52pm Sat 25 Feb 12

Ruth Smith wrote:
I'm disappointed in the Council. Their own online questionnaire made clear that an increase of just a few percent (a couple of pounds per household) would mean that cuts could be avoided.
Cuts are better avoided by pruning overstaffing and overremuneration in LAs.

Under NO circumstances should taxes rise ANY further. Let CT spending instead be cut smartly, so that we see CT at half of current levels. After all, CT has soared to ca. double 1997 levels, and way ahead of inflation over those many years.

FYI, Ruth: taxpayers are sick of being abused as milch cows.

http://www.isitfair.
co.uk/

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Man on the Green says...
9:27am Tue 28 Feb 12

Had WODC not squandered £120,000 or more on paying "hush money" to their former Strategic Director who was shuffled off quickly to sail round the world after some sort of shenanigans at the Council, they'd have been able to save the grants to Base 33 and the CAB, which do more good that the senior management (sic) of the authority combined. Mr Neudegg still needs to come clean on this. It's not enough that the authority should have been reprimanded for deliberately seeking to mislead ministers, the Auditor, and us; these stables need mucking out!

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simplicissimus says...
9:52am Tue 28 Feb 12

No work termination deals should be subject to gagging clauses, and any pay outs should surely be easily accessible online by the public, given that compromise agreements involve tax monies from the public purse. The gagging and confidentiality clause have the big and avoidable disadvantage that bad management behaviours and decisions get covered and hushed up. This prevents the services from our LAs from improving, as they must.

MotG, you're quite right. These deals are a major public scandal, and happen constantly in our public authorities nationwide, at overt and more importantly covert costs of if not billions of pounds. The covert costs result from widespread waste and poor practice, despite much spin, waffle and propaganda to the contrary.

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