Our intention to deliver a lower council tax was made in our 2007 manifesto, which said we would aim to set a council tax increase under inflation each year.
Linking to September RPI guaranteed that pensioners in particular would end up being better off, year on year – it’s often their biggest bill and with a fixed income and low interest rates we are trying to make a difference to the old tradition of ever-increasing council tax bills.
With September 2009 RPI at -1.4%, an absolute cut was therefore required.
Without needing any front line service cuts – no silver bullet – by October we’d found £6.2m of savings to put into our programme. It might be easier to make service cuts to find savings, but we’re making savings by smarter budgeting and a lot of options considered and discarded. On top of this, we have cost factors, such as a swiftly rising (but important) safeguarding budget, that emerged after the case of Baby P.
We’ve incentivised our officers to examine their budgets since last summer, and by making it clear that we won’t accept cuts to front line services, or unacceptable hikes in fees and charges, have forced the pace on real organisational change in the back office.
There are no big hikes in our charges, no spending of reserves, and no cuts to front line services. In fact, we’ve introduced new parking discounts, increased our revenue contribution to the capital budget, and enhanced front line services including fulfilling a manifesto pledge to double the number of our community wardens.
The resulting budget has delivered us a 4% reduction in Council Tax, which we are passing on to our residents in full – they will be over £40 a year better off at Band ‘D’.
( 7 comments ) Tags: council tax
Comment by Jason Cross on January 21, 2010 at 2:55 pm
This is great news for people in Windsor and Maidenhead. If only the rest of the country could go the same way.
I suspect it would be a lot easier if we got rid of Brown/Darling.
Comment by Jack Hughes on January 21, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Hi David,
What is a community warden ?
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Comment by Jack Hughes on January 22, 2010 at 8:59 am
You’ll save a bit more if you drop all the green nonsense. Just say no.
Comment by Mr C Marsden on January 27, 2010 at 10:42 pm
council tax is a waste of time. it’s meant to serve us the public, but it does not. take the bad weather at start of the year we where told that roads could be gritted so where is all my council tax going? i will tell were so my local council can grit a car park and the paths outside the town hall so they 1)have somewhere to park the cars when they got to work and 2)not slip over walking in the door to do some work. well lucky them as others had to have time off due to the weather and not being able to work. so Yes conservative’s u keep the council tax seen as you brought it in but dont expect public to pay and not see the benefits
Comment by Tom I Balmain on January 28, 2010 at 4:38 pm
What a wonderful job you have done to get a reduction in your council tax of 4% for 2010 – 2011. There is no doubt the next five years will be very tough for local authorities but if all authorities followed your lead then the hard pressed council tax payer(shareholder) may see some light at the end of the tunnel. I am a Conservative Councillor myself but my council has suffered from floor damping and has lost quite a few millions, I look once again to a conservative government putting right the wrongs caused by the Socialist government of Gordon Brown.
Cllr Tom I Balmain
Comment by David Price on January 29, 2010 at 8:20 am
Excellent!
What a difference the right attitude makes – put the taxpayer first and keep a promise. If David Burbage can achieve a straight 4% cut with his team in Maidenhead & Windsor Council, why can’t central government achieve more?
A significant attitude adjustment is definitely needed in Westminster and Whitehall as well as other local councils.