Council Tax in Sefton is set to go up by the maximum amount this year.
Sefton Council leader Cllr Ian Maher said the government is “basically forcing” a 2.99% rise by not providing sufficient money to local authorities.
At a meeting of the council ’s cabinet today, Thursday February 10, where councillors met to discuss a report detailing plans for next year’s budget, Cllr Maher said: “What we have is a budget we’re balancing despite all the financial issues we’ve faced since 2010.
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“Here we are yet again with the government basically forcing us to increase council tax by the maximum amount rather than recognising that should be funded from our other taxations that we all pay into instead of for instance giving a billion pound of tax cuts to bankers.
“The country’s in a mess at the moment, this government’s in a complete and utter mess and the finance they’re providing reflects that.”
Cllr Maher made the remarks after Executive Director Corporate Resources and Customer Services said that while some additional funding had been provided, beyond 2023 there was no extra funding allocated for local authorities.
Rallying against the 50% cuts to Sefton Council since 2010, Cllr Maher continued: “We’re doing well under the circumstances we’ve faced, the lack of support and complete and utter lack of understanding for what local government provides for citizens.
“We provide everything that affects life day by day – how do the street lights come on of a night? Not by parliament but by local authority.
“The bins that get collected – that’s not by parliament, that’s local authority. With children’s services, we’re looking after our children, that’s not done by national government, it’s done by local authorities and our partners.
“In that background, we’re doing ok but we should be doing much better. If we had the funding we would be able to make life much better for our people.”
He added: “We’re doing as best as we can within this, we’re doing well, we’re not cutting services across the patch.
“We’ve continued to keep libraries, children’s centres and so on open, we continue to look after our coastline, invest where we can and we can see things happening across the borough.”
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