Council Tax rant

[planetit]

Why are they explicitly splitting out fire/police service that cost £100 and then have OTHER charge of £1000, total of £1,100?

Can you explain this strange logic of picking two useful services that cost bugger all and keeping the rest quiet?

Fire and police does not cost bugger all. They are only partly funded through council tax. A lot of their funding comes from central government. So you pay a lot more than £50 a year for the police. The sums listed on your council tax bill are just the part of that bill which goes towards these services.

The council also publishes a budget detailing where all the rest of your money goes.

[AtW]

Fire and police does not cost bugger all. They are only partly funded through council tax.

To me -- the coulcil tax payer they don't cost much. I would be happy to double the amount I pay on the police provided they don't hand the money to EDS, Accenture et al.

The council also publishes a budget detailing where all the rest of your money goes.

Yes I know, but why they separate police and fire service from the total? It makes no sense apart from trying to "reduce" the bill kind of saying that council tax is only £1000, while police and firemen are extra nobody going to argue about and they are only £100.

[The Late, Great JC]

To me -- the coulcil tax payer they don't cost much. I would be happy to double the amount I pay on the police provided they don't hand the money to EDS, Accenture et al.



Yes I know, but why they separate police and fire service from the total? It makes no sense apart from trying to "reduce" the bill kind of saying that council tax is only £1000, while police and firemen are extra nobody going to argue about and they are only £100.

AtW, if you can't afford to pay it, get a job ya bum!

[planetit]

To me -- the coulcil tax payer they don't cost much. I would be happy to double the amount I pay on the police provided they don't hand the money to EDS, Accenture et al.

I guess I didn’t make myself clear. You pay (lets say) £50 towards the police through your council tax, but you also pay a load more (I don’t know how much) through other taxation. So the total cost to you is much more than £50.

[AtW]

I guess I didn’t make myself clear.

I understood you.

What I don't understand are the reasons why council charges £1100 (total) and splits it into:

1) Fire - £30
2) Police - £70
3) Other - £1000

This is highly abnormal behavior -- the OTHER column should never be so much bigger than those explicitly named. Why do they do it?

[DimPrawn]

1) Fire - £30
2) Police - £70
3) Other - £1000

Other is council workers pay and pensions. Outreach workers. Racial harmonisation dept. Ethnic community projects. Poverty liason dept. Social justice and fairness dept. The list goes on........

[hyperD]

Housing and Council Tax benefits take up 40% of the budget. Others such as Leisure Services and Planning & Building Control are next.

Oh yes and pensions: The increased contribution needed to fund the Pension Fund deficit and pensions for existing staff is about 20% of the total council budget. Nice.

[AtW]

Housing and Council Tax benefits take up 40% of the budget.

This does not answer the question -- why of all these major budget articles they only mention Fire and Police who get much smaller amounts than other things?

Are they shy of using so much tax money on pensions, salaries etc?

[hyperD]

"Other" wraps up stuff that will not be of interest to the punters or too many disparate items that do not come under straightforward headings.

Remember the council will send a nice user friendly budget summary to let you know a nice simple breakdown under friendly headers such as police, street cleaning, leisure, planning etc

You need to dig deeper into the accounts to see further breakdowns but I find 100 pages of pdf tend to induce rigor mortis.

[AtW]

"Other" wraps up stuff that will not be of interest to the punters or too many disparate items that do not come under straightforward headings.

Oh that... and I assumed they just don't like people to see how much of THEIR money go to benefits, pensions etc. Its one thing to see abstract figure of many millions from the budget going towards that, and lets be honest -- people don't read budgets, but its another matter if punters see that they pay for the police £30 and whole £300 towards pensions and benefits, or whatever the figure is there. That's why you see fire/police in open breakdown but not anything else.