Herefordshire Council approved today (5 March 2010) the lowest council tax rise ever in its history. The rise of 2.54 per cent represents £29.85 a year, or 57.4 pence a week, on a Band D property, which will rise to £1,205.09 in the next financial year but is still below the average council tax level for the country.
In a challenging budget setting, the council balanced its books last year for the seventh year running and achieved £5.6 million in savings for the next financial year.
Today, Herefordshire Council announced it had allocated an extra £1.5 million in capital and extra reserves for road maintenance, following the worst cold spell in the county for 30 years. The council, with its contractor Amey, is filling in 200 potholes a day, dealing with the most urgent first but allocating £3.7 million over the next 12 months to bring roads up to repair and resurface the road network.
Councillor Roger Phillips, leader of the council, said the council recognised the impact of any rise on local communities but Herefordshire was facing huge pressures in providing more social care for vulnerable and older people, a section of the population that is growing rapidly, as well as facing more expensive safeguarding for children.
The numbers of people receiving intensive home care has risen by 25 per cent in two years, and the number of children under child protection has rocketed by 100 per cent in the same period. The council today announced an extra £500,000 in contingency for increased pressure on social care next year.
Councillor Phillips announced that he expected soon to hear details of the new dedicated schools grant funding formula from the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Herefordshire Council has been lobbying for a fairer deal for schools, as Herefordshire gets just over £4,000 funding per pupil from government, compared with the national average of nearly £4,400. The county is fighting for government recognition of the higher overheads involved in providing education in sparsely populated areas.
Herefordshire people get £317 each from the central government formula grant, which is 17 per cent less funding per head of population than the average for similar authorities, despite the fact that public services are more expensive to provide in rural settings.