News about the Council Tax 3

At the Council meeting on Tuesday, the provisional Council budget and Council Tax level was announced for 2007/08.

The Council Tax has been provisionally set so that it will rise no higher than 3.8% and could well be lower by the time it is confirmed in March.

While this increase is below inflation as promised, I would have liked it to be lower. However, this is not possible due to the poor funding grant by the Labour Government to Barnet and Gordon Brown's NHS funding crises. As a result of the underfunding in the NHS. Barnet is having to provide extra services and so 1.61% of the council tax increase will be to provide health services that the NHS should be providing. Without this amount in the budget the tax increase would be around 2.25%.

This Council Tax increase is likely to be one of the lowest in the country. This is a result of the efficiency's the Council is making and even some cuts where required.

What I found interesting that both Labour and the Lib Dems did not criticise the low increase in Council Tax. Instead they both said we should be providing more services which would therefore make the Council Tax increase much higher.

This therefore shows that the Conservative Council is delivering high quality services which people want at the lowest possible level of tax.