Reply to: Council Tax rant

[Rebecca Loos]

surely also payouts following successful legal actions taken by people who damage their ankles when tripping over unmaintained pavements?
I thought that was one of the massive charges faced by council these days...

[John Galt]

I actually went through our local councils accounts a couple of years ago when I was involved in a local compaign against the increases that year. Almost every area of expenditure had been reduced year on year - the only (and substantial) increase was for council workers pensions.

[WageSlave]

leave huge PDFs and budgets to the pen pushers.

Suits me. Kerching!

[AtW]

It should be on version 4.5 now. You can also have a look at their CPA and BVPI ratings for an idea of how well they are doing.

I don't give a crap -- if they break down council tax into fire/police/other with other accounting for 90% then its totally wrong. Add 10 other top spending categories so that everyone can see what they paying for, and leave huge PDFs and budgets to the pen pushers.

[WageSlave]

AtW, councils spent a lot of money on projects. If you want an indication of some of the stuff your council if wasting your money on, check out their IEG statement. It should be on version 4.5 now. You can also have a look at their CPA and BVPI ratings for an idea of how well they are doing.

[AtW]

No - I don't want to read this, I have already looked. What I want is to ALL people have chance to know that, know what £1000 go towards when they can see £30 for fire and £70 for police. Politicians can get away with this crap because technically they have it all on paper, but people are too busy to have a look, so council tax is being wrapped into nice police/fire/other envelope and every is happy, just like tank of fuel costs £50 and people don't know EXACTLY how much of THAT tank went to the Treasury. Not just abstract a lot, not overall amount in the budget - but how much THEY paid AT THAT TIME. Now this is powerful enough to make people think and vote accordinly. That's why Brown does not want to touch income tax because he knows that as soon as there is a piece of paper which clearly states what amount was taken in tax HE IS IN TROUBLE. Same with the councils.

In the USA they have good law requiring fuel receipts to state FULL amount of tax taken, not just VAT but any duties.

[WageSlave]

But what the FK they spend £1000 on? What kind of perverse logic makes them separate SMALLER amounts like police/firemen and hide the rest into OTHER column?

What does it go on? It goes on my consulting fee, my dear boy

[PRC1964]

ATw, just read this.

http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/Media/B...%202004-05.pdf

[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.

[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]

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]

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.

[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........

[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?

[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.