How much has your council tax gone up this year?

[arc@css]

Its the only bill you really have no control over and it just seem to go up and up.

+1

 

[Werewolf]

9% I'm curious what the council liability is for the pothole that has gotten so deep it's exposed wires is in regards to a motorcycle/bicycle/pedestrian getting caught in them

I think they're probbaly sensing cables but it is alarming to see wires exposed in the road

Fix my street with a location of the pothole, or ring/email/use the council's own contact forms, around my way if the hole is deep / big enough to be considered a risk it tends to get filled fast, same with any time you can see exposed wiring anywhere, I reported a streetlamp with wiring coming out (my small dog at the time nearly pee'd on the wiring), and the council had a team out within about an hour of the call to check and make it safe, and another team out a day or two later to take the lampost down. IIRC about a week later they had a new one up.

Basically anything that is an active/real danger tends to get a much faster response than things like shallow potholes.

 

[BUDFORCE]

This, I wouldn’t even mind if it wasn’t for everything literally crumbling around us.

You just wonder where all the money is going.

 

[aVdub]

Must be that time of the year when I do a FOI asking how much they have in savings, while asking me and others to stump up more for their failed police, police commissioner and other failures that would see them as a bankrupt if operating as a company.

 

[CapitalOne]

Croydon (ahem) 4.99%. Better than last year’s 15%.

It will be 360/month ish

 

[Nasher]

Councils slowly pushing people out of their homes with tax seems counter productive. Surely making it cheaper and having less people relying on benefits, or having to be chased for money by lawyers would be better?

They already priced business out of town centers, then moan not enough people are visiting town centers and businesses aren't making them enough money...

The whole place is run by idiots.

Yay, 10%. Along with changing bin collections to fortnightly (probably won't affect us personally, but I eagerly await even more litter on the streets), plus millions in cuts to various services, as if the place wasn't enough of a ****hole.

My area alternates general waste and recycling fortnightly. What happens is people fill up their recycling and use their general waste bin as an overflow. Same with garden waste. Yay, saving the planet.

 

[Haggisman]

My area alternates general waste and recycling fortnightly. What happens is people fill up their recycling and use their general waste bin as an overflow. Same with garden waste. Yay, saving the planet.

Been close to doing this a couple of times, our recycling is usually 3/4 full by the end of the first week, luckily the local tip is free (unless they've announced new charges for that as well - wouldn't surprise me)

 

[Tefal]

Fix my street with a location of the pothole, or ring/email/use the council's own contact forms, around my way if the hole is deep / big enough to be considered a risk it tends to get filled fast, same with any time you can see exposed wiring anywhere, I reported a streetlamp with wiring coming out (my small dog at the time nearly pee'd on the wiring), and the council had a team out within about an hour of the call to check and make it safe, and another team out a day or two later to take the lampost down. IIRC about a week later they had a new one up.

Basically anything that is an active/real danger tends to get a much faster response than things like shallow potholes.

I'll have a look at that. It's a main road so I don't fancy standing in it to take a pic but if I can do with a description and location pin I'll do it.

I expect the fill to be the same as the other recently where we end up with a couple of shovel fulls of tarmac thrown in leaving a mound sticking up an inch proud of the surface that rapidly disintegrates into loosestones

 

[Tefal]

You just wonder where all the money is going.

Those useless police commissioner jobs won't pay for themselves!

 

[Uther]

Councils slowly pushing people out of their homes with tax seems counter productive. Surely making it cheaper and having less people relying on benefits, or having to be chased for money by lawyers would be better?

They already priced business out of town centers, then moan not enough people are visiting town centers and businesses aren't making them enough money...

The whole place is run by idiots.



My area alternates general waste and recycling fortnightly. What happens is people fill up their recycling and use their general waste bin as an overflow. Same with garden waste. Yay, saving the planet.

Fortnightly for the recycling bin, once every three weeks for the general waste bin. We don't fill them up but some of the neighbours...
Just seem to be paying more and more tax for less services. Country is wrecked.

 

[200sols]

You just wonder where all the money is going.

Social care.

 

[adam cool dude]

You just wonder where all the money is going.

Asset stripped all the way back to the 80's. Now everyone is buggered. Just think of all the things you actually get for £200 a month and then think where the hell to get the funding for that.

 

[jeffk]

Councils slowly pushing people out of their homes with tax seems counter productive. Surely making it cheaper and having less people relying on benefits, or having to be chased for money by lawyers would be better?

They already priced business out of town centers, then moan not enough people are visiting town centers and businesses aren't making them enough money...

The whole place is run by idiots.

Funding from central government has fallen by 65% over the past 15 years. Even with all of the tax rises, council spending has fallen by 30% in real terms. Most councils are struggling to meet even their basic statutory duties, even with the rises in council tax.

The chaos you see is a direct result of Conservative policy.

 

[Nasher]

Funding from central government has fallen by 65% over the past 15 years. Even with all of the tax rises, council spending has fallen by 30% in real terms. Most councils are struggling to meet even their basic statutory duties, even with the rises in council tax.

The chaos you see is a direct result of Conservative policy.

So have real terms wages for most people. At some point many just aren't going to afford to have a house and we'll have a weird situation where people with descent jobs are homeless. Retail sails already dived because people have stopped buying things.

 

[redeye]

Social care.

Nope.

Social Care 360: Expenditure | The King's Fund

How much are local authorities spending on adult social care and how much does it cost to commission it?

www.kingsfund.org.uk

Total expenditure in 2021/22 was £2.6 billion more in real terms than in 2010/11. However, as a result of Covid-19, some expenditure in 2020/21 and 2021/22 was on support for the social care sector rather than individuals’ care and so totals are not comparable with previous years.

Here's why...

Local government funding in England | Institute for Government

How local government is funded in England and how it has changed since 2010.

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk

Local authority ‘spending power’ – the amount of money authorities have to spend from government grants, council tax and business rates – fell by 17.5% between 2009/10 and 2019/20, before partially recovering. However, in 2021/22 it was still 10.2% below 2009/10 levels.

The fall in spending power is largely because of reductions in central government grants. These grants were cut by 40% in real terms between 2009/10 and 2019/20, from £46.5bn to £28.0bn (2023/24 prices). This downward trend was reversed in 2020/21 and 2021/22 as central government made more grant funding available to local government in response to the pressures of the pandemic. Though even including Covid grants, the fall in grant income was still 21% in real terms between 2009/10 and 2021/22; without, the fall was 31%.

 

[200sols]

Nope.

You didnt counter the social care aspect.

 

[redeye]

You didnt counter the social care aspect.

Are you trying to say local councils have had to spend a lot more on it therefore there costs have gone up even more for them (whilst funding has been substantially cut) or that it's to blame for government cuts to local councils?

 

[413x]

It's getting harder and harder for people to claim the UK is great place to live.

I wonder where the tipping point is.

As others have said asset stripping is coming home to roost now. Everything profitable is owned by private enterprise.. Often making nice profits. And when they don't, they get bailed out.


There's blame to go around everywhere. Especially the tories.

There's no way back really. As it would be near impossible now to take everything back nationally.

How much more can people get tapped for?

 

[Werewolf]

It's getting harder and harder for people to claim the UK is great place to live.

I wonder where the tipping point is.

As others have said asset stripping is coming home to roost now. Everything profitable is owned by private enterprise.. Often making nice profits. And when they don't, they get bailed out.


There's blame to go around everywhere. Especially the tories.

There's no way back really. As it would be near impossible now to take everything back nationally.

How much more can people get tapped for?

Yup

IIRC in order to hide the cuts to local funding our council have sold off many of their properties in deals that get them a few millions one financial year but they end up paying many times more than that "saving" over the next 10-20 years as they now have to lease back and pay (often higher) maintenance charges to the new owners company on buildings that they used to own outright and be able to use their own people to repair etc (so things that would have cost a couple of hours of a council workers time are now billed as profit making jobs at commercial rates with the normal "minimum call out charge").
It's the same with everything from rubbish collection to road repairs, it used to be that the council usually employed the people directly as part of the "works" departments, now they're all contractors who charge far more for small jobs.

 

[Haggisman]

Yup

IIRC in order to hide the cuts to local funding our council have sold off many of their properties in deals that get them a few millions one financial year but they end up paying many times more than that "saving" over the next 10-20 years as they now have to lease back and pay (often higher) maintenance charges to the new owners company on buildings that they used to own outright and be able to use their own people to repair etc (so things that would have cost a couple of hours of a council workers time are now billed as profit making jobs at commercial rates with the normal "minimum call out charge").
It's the same with everything from rubbish collection to road repairs, it used to be that the council usually employed the people directly as part of the "works" departments, now they're all contractors who charge far more for small jobs.

Of course I'm sure it's all perfectly innocent and none of the people in charge making the decisions to sell those properties have links to the companies being allowed to buy them or stand to profit in any way from doing so...