Council tax to be frozen
Wednesday 11th February 2009, 4:00PM GMT.
The new Shropshire Council is set to freeze council tax in a bid to help residents struggling with the financial crisis gripping the country, it was revealed today.
The announcement came as the Bank of England warned it would need to take extreme measures to battle a “deep recession” and figures showed unemployment reached a 10-year high of 1.97 million.
Malcolm Pate, chairman of the Implementation Executive planning for the new authority, today said he will recommend to councillors that there should be no council tax increase for Shropshire Council in 2009/10.
Councillor Pate said: “I have listened carefully to the people of Shropshire and responded to their concerns in this economic downturn.“
“I will be writing to West Mercia Police Authority and Shropshire & Wrekin Fire Authority and the parish and town councils asking that they be mindful of the problems that local people face, given the current economic downturn, when setting their own levies.
“There will be no proposed council tax increase and we will be able to improve our services.”
The proposed council tax freeze is a result of the provisional revenue budget for the council’s first year showing millions of pounds more in savings than estimated.
Mervyn King, bank governor, today forecast the recession could see the economy shrink by as much as four per cent by mid-2009 if rates are not cut further from the already historic low of one per cent.
Today’s national unemployment figures were mirrored in Shropshire, which saw a rise in the jobless figure of 547 up to 4,139. In Telford & Wrekin the figure was up from 3,490 to 3,962.
The biggest rise in Shropshire was in Shrewsbury and Atcham where the figure rose by 209 from 1,138 to 1,347. In Oswestry the number of people claiming the benefit went up to 750, and in Bridgnorth, it rose to 656.
North Shropshire saw a rise to 910 and in South Shropshire, the figure was up to 476.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s spokesman said: “These are very disappointing figures.
“Every job loss is obviously a matter of regret and disappointment.”
By Rhea Parsons
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How about reducing it instead?
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With the news that many councils were stpring millions of tax payes money in Icelanic banks I would think that any council would be ashamed to raise council tax this year.
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however hes already massively increased tax or bridgnorth and shrewsbury residents to pay for the excesses of south shropshire dc, why on earth my tax should go up to pay for a smooth homogenisation of services in shropshire is beyond me, its a rip off
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good we pay to much as it is
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No doubt cuts will follow. Bins emptied once every three weeks?
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Rightly so!
So much tax, so much dross!
We need a cull
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Too much to hope that Telford and Wrekin might follow suit, I suppose?
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Well done Shropshire County Council. Pity that the likes of Powys C C cannot do the same rather than taking the easy option of increasing rates by 2.9% when the ratepayers are really struggling in the current climate.
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I trust this will mean no overall increase including any proposal for the Shrewsbury Town Council. I suspect that thyis however will not be the case.
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Brilliant news amongst all the gloom and soom.
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Frozen..Delayed..Deferred..call it what you like. We will at sometime get clobbered and it won’t be pleasant. But will it be fair? I doubt it. There are extremeley hard times ahead for this country.
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A typical politician’s answer to milk the current economic downturn – the business case for a Unitary council, first circulated over two years ago, included a freeze on Council Tax for most of Shropshire in 2009-2010 (Bridgnorth residents excepted).
So many thanks for telling us what you already proposed 2 years ago – its a great comfort.
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Instead of coming down hard on us perhaps the council might like to save some money by delayering the totem pole and asking the superflous to hand over their cushy pensions at the door on the way out. That’ll be the pensions that we all pay for in our council tax. This of course won’t happen. Its too obvious.
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Merc,
Most of the people who work for councils are pretty low paid. Many private sector companies also still have good final-salary pensions.
Do you really begrudge the likes of street-cleaners and other low paid public servants their pensions?
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Do we have any totem poles in Shrewsbury, Merc? It’s not a new bit of public art is it?
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sir digby jones thinks the civil service could function with 50% of the staff, i think the same of the council, its a parasite on the local economy, costing us all hard preventing us having cash in our pockets to spend in the local shops, such a aburden we could live without
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