….while the amount that districts can increase council tax is capped, there is no cap for parish councils,
Can we guess, children? Ah, yes, knew we could. So the districts will devolve activities down onto the parish but proffer no budget. Therefore the parish tax will rise.
In April, a total of 11 parishes increased their council tax precepts by more than 300 per cent.
That Charlie Munger, eh?
“So the districts will devolve activities down onto the parish but proffer no budget. ”
Not sure they can though, can they ?
My PC is very limited in what it is allowed to do.
That sort of thing changed as far back as the 1930s. Before then the Parish was the Basic Unit of local government, but it started to become unwieldy as populations and their mobility increased .
“Capped” – unless you’re in one of the councils that were permitted to raise them above the cap this year.
Council Tax here has risen from £1592 in 2018 to £2302 this year. Pretty close to RPI, miles above CPI.
Funnily enough, the Fire Authority precept has consistently increased below inflation, everything else has increased above.
Most Parish Councils don’t have the staff to enter into significant devolved service agreements. Most employ one person – a part-time clerk. The services they provide – eg village halls, bus shelters, litter bins, mowing – are provided by volunteers or contractors (including higher-tier councils).
They’re already doing it.
The district council here devolved minor road repairs to the parish councils years ago. Initially gave them a grant to do it, which made them all happy to accept. Then of course the grant was reduced.
Council does a pretty good job of it, and Tony is a lot cheaper than the people the District Council used.
My problem with it is that the District (now unitary County) Council still spends more every year despite devolving all these costs.
Yes, we were “unitarised” on the argument it would save money getting rid of all the districts. The new council was already 25 million in deficit within the first couple of years.