Opposition parties have accused Nottinghamshire County Council of showing a 'failure of leadership' by proposing a tax rise of at least £50 for all households. Ben Bradley MP, the leader of the Conservative-controlled authority, said that the council is planning a tax increase of 4.84% for the next financial year, starting in April.
Councillor Bradley said the action needed to be taken given inflationary pressures, which he said had seen the authority face extra costs of £25 million over the last year. Without the tax rise and internal savings, including the reduction of council buildings down from 17 to nine, Councillor Bradley added that there would have been a financial gap of £35 million at the county council over the next three years.
But Councillor Kate Foale, who leads the Labour Party at the county council, said: "After a decade of austerity and £300 million pounds of cuts to the county council's budget, we still have no plan from Government on how to properly fund local public services like social care, and this council tax rise will not fix the problems that has created. At County Hall the Conservatives have a choice.
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"They can push back on this and demand a better deal from Westminster, or do what they have done which is choose to stay silent and raise council tax on Nottinghamshire residents instead, piling more pressure on the shoulders of local people during a cost-of-living crisis. At a time when the Tory Government are chaotically failing to deliver basic public services across the board elsewhere, by choosing to do the latter, Nottinghamshire Conservatives are putting party before Nottinghamshire people, and that is a failure of leadership.
"Under a Labour-led council, our first order of business would be to challenge the Government on their decade of underfunding local public services. Council tax rises are a sticking plaster, we need long-term solutions to these problems."
In response to the problems caused by reduced Government funding, Mr Bradley said: "If you go back 2010 to 2015 it's no secret that local government funding reduced very significantly and that was the reason that budgets were very difficult at that time. But in recent years that hasn't been the case, the local government settlement was more generous than we expected.
"Local government funding in the last few years has gradually increased, the problem we find now aside from the history of 2010 to 2015 is massive rising demand. Budgets have gone up by above inflation but demand has gone up significantly more and that is the challenge we are trying to meet.
"It's not about government funding, it's about the way we deliver our services. We're trying to prioritise key services, we're trying to get out of some costs and that is what will make us viable and sustainable."
In response to its latest offer on local government funding, which it is consulting on until January 16, a Government spokesperson previously said: "This settlement provides the most deprived areas of England with 17% more funding per household than the least deprived. We are also making available an additional £5 billion for councils in the next financial year, so they can continue to deliver vital frontline services."
But Councillor Jason Zadrozny, the Leader of the Independent Alliance at County Hall said: "The County Council are expecting hard pressed residents to put their hands in the their pocket yet again. This new rise will mean that the average council tax for Nottinghamshire County Council has gone up by over £350 a year since 2017.
"Residents will be furiously questioning whether they get value for money – with complaints about the broken roads and pavements at a record high. The Independent Alliance opposition group are working on a plan cut this rise and protect residents."
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