Council tax to rise by double the rate of inflation

Council tax bills in England are set to rise by about 4% on average this year, reports the BBC today.

A Local Government Association (LGA) study into 100 draft council budgets obtained by the BBC shows some councils may put bills up by nearly 5%.

The association has warned that many local authorities will still have to ration or cut services despite the increases in tax.

The chairman of the LGA, Sir Simon Milton is quoted as saying: "No-one likes paying more council tax, but this year town halls are making enormous efforts to keep bills down."

But adds that it has been impossible to avoid putting up bills because of the increasing pressure on council budgets.

"Several government departments are shifting extra costs on to councils while limiting funding from central government," Sir Simon said.

The LGA cites that councils are facing extra costs caused by increased migration, funding free travel for pensioners and the disabled, and increasing social care budgets, due to larger numbers of elderly people, and the cost of dealing with household waste.

In Hampshire, one of the councils where bills will go up by nearly 5%, the authority's leader Cllr Ken Thornberry also blames Whitehall for creating the situation.

"We are being asked to do more and more every year by central government with less and less. The system is not sustainable."

This news of another inflation-busting rise in Council Tax comes as the Government gifts a 63% increase in payments to the (audit-failing) EU, and highlights the utter irresponsibility of those MPs who recently voted to approve that deal.

Their constituents will clearly now pay the price of such completely unjustified generosity to the EU through their Council Tax bills. Read who those MPs were here.

As a result of the EU budget deal, we are now paying so much money to EU institutions every year that our new gross annual EU contribution (more than £10 billion) is now enough to cut everyone's Council Tax bill in half.

That's what those MPs could have done with the money, instead of giving it to a body whose auditors haven't been able to explain its spending for 13 years running, and which is regularly mired in reports of waste and fraud.

Coupled with the recent news that MPs want to gift themselves a nice pay rise, a large section of our political elite seem to be becoming ever more detached from financial reality ... busily feathering their own nests and unjustifiably gifting billions of pounds extra a year to unaccountable international institutions, imagining that such waste is not contributing to oppressive Council Tax rises and essential public services being cut.

The only way to wake these people up with a sharp dose of reality is now at that ballot box, the next time we get an opportunity.