Conservatives who broke the Council Tax Freeze promise 1

Which Conservatives broke their parties 2010 election promise to freeze Council Tax for 2 years. 

Even though the Conservatives didn't win, their promise morphed into the Coalition Agreement.

Liberal Democrat run Councils followed the agreement. The Conservatives in Cambridgeshire have broken this promise. The Police Authority has 17 members. 9 of these are Councillors nominated and a majority of these are needed to pass the Council Tax.

As no elected members said they voted differently they must have all voted for this rise. Ms Shona Johnstone has put her name forward as Conservative candidate for Police Commissioner up for election in November 2012. Ruth Rogers for Labour. Neither has stood up for the Council Taxpayer against the ever increasing Council Tax bill.

A petition to stop a Council Tax increase!

The St Ives Branch of the Conservatives have been pushing a petition against any rise in Council Tax by St Ives Town Council. This is the only Independently run Town Council in the Huntingdonshire Constituency and is up for election this year.

It would seem reasonable to me if the St Ives Conservative Branch was also against all other rises in Council Tax pertaining to St Ives. But they are not. Many of their members are Councillors and Representatives on local authorities which are looking to up their portions of the Council Tax by 2.95% to 3.5%.

So how are the prominent members of St Ives Conservative Branch? Here are some:

Both County Councillors (2.95% increase) are also members of the Cambs Fire Authority (2.95% increase).

As for the District Council:

These 5 District Councillors include Cllr Ablewhite, who as District Council Leader, is proposing a 3.5% increase.

So what we have is a load of Councillors jumping up and down about an increase in Council Tax by St Ives Town Council whereas local authorities they are on are upping the Council tax anyway. This is just wrong.

The Conservatives should remember what was said in the 2010 Conservative Manifesto. To remind them it says:

What is rather ironic is St Ives Town Council is likely to follow the Coalition policy and keep the Council Tax freeze.

So there we have have it. The St Ives Conservatives are against their Town Council raising Council Tax but are for Council Tax increases in other Councils they are on.  All the Conservatives run Councils should be abiding by the 2010 Conservative Manifesto and freezing their Council Tax.

The Police have gone very quiet over their budget cuts! I wonder why?

Doom and gloom came from Cambridgeshire Police over dire budget cuts with there Medium Term Plan and then silence. I thought I would look to see why. The Police Formula Grant was announced by the Home Office back in December 2010. This give the formula grant allocated by the Home Office and DCLG over the next two years and the Home Office grant allocation for the two years after. DCLG has yet to publish their allocations for those years.

This means a total grant of £87.1 million for 2011/12 falling to £81.4 million in 2012/13. In the two years after the grant from the Home office stays pretty static.

With the Grants announced this rubbishes the Police Medium Term Plan. In the 2011/12 MTP the Police Authority were looking at a deficit of £4.774 million. With this formula grant they get an extra £2.321 million to spend.

So no real reason to put up Council Tax in 2011/12 or even in 2012/13.
Is this the case of the Police authority crying wolf? Well they did take a bunch of grant out of the MTP.

This allowed for the headlines about massive cuts and Armageddon. The Police and the Police Authority have really "cried wolf" on the cuts and altered the figures accordingly so their representatives could talk about £30 million of cuts. By overstating the loss of grant the Police and the Police Authority now have to inform the public why they have so much money!

All this doom and gloom over cuts and hyping those cuts out of all proportion makes for good headlines but in the end can we really trust the Police and what they tell us when the cuts are over-exaggerated.

Likely St Neots Council Tax increases.

With 2010/11 Council Tax (CT) setting getting towards its final stage I thought I would take a look at the likely final outcome. These are the Band D amounts. Band D represents the percentage increases so whichever Band your property is in these are the increases. I have divided up the Council Tax into their constituent amounts. I have three different totals as two annexed areas will be joining SNTC area on 1st April 2010.

St Neots: 2.53% increase. This is smaller than the 2.95% sub total because SNTC was able to cut its portion of the CT with all the new money from the annexed areas.

ex Eynesbury Hardwicke: On 1st April 2010 the Town Ward of Eynesbury Hardwicke Parish is annexed. CT payers currently pay zero in the Parish portion. On joining SNTC they will liable for SNTC CT rates. To go from zero to £84.24 (Band D) is an infinite percentage. All this extra money SNTC gets has gone mainly to cover increased spending and some to reduce the CT.

Love's Farm: On 1st April 2010 Love's Farm part of St Neots Rural Parish Council is annexed. CT payers at Band D will see there current Parish CT of £16.95 rise to the SNTC rate of £84.24. This represents a 397% rise. All this extra money SNTC gets has gone mainly to cover increased spending and some to reduce the CT.

I went to the Neighbourhood Forum and had a good time.

Last night was the second go at the new neighbourhood forum. The first time I've been to one in Huntingdonshire. I arrived slightly late. These are my views on the meeting.

Ian Bates (in his role a a member of the CPA*) performed well as the Authority's Lead Member for St Neots and District. He set out what the Police Authority is doing and the budgetary constraints. He also set out a good comparison with other Police forces as to numbers. Whilst he alluded to future problems these were left to one side. Even when I asked a question about the future the answer seemed rather hazy. The forecast is for savings of £7 million over the next 2 years having to be made.

Inspector Mark Greenhalgh gave a very good performance over Policing in St Neots and District. The closure of the Unique Bar has been good for the crime statistics. Some of the crime stats were a bit funny with some peaks caused by snowballs.

One item that did come out was the youths wanting an alternative things to do other than Youth Clubs. The idea came forward for a Coffee Bar for the youths. That would be a good idea for the Town Council to take up with County. Other information to come forward is the County Youth Service has yet to sort out Bargroves! An other idea was for a Youth Forum.

There weren't that many concerns brought forward about the problems in area. Though I have to say that whilst a good number of people attended it seemed to me to me that if I cut out all the Councillors, Officials, Police, party members there were few uninvolved residents attending this meeting.

For the future I did ask for the District and County to explain how the cuts/savings/efficiencies are going to affect St Neots. How can priorities be set for St Neots if residents do not understand how deep the cuts are going to go?

One thing Cllr Thorpe did was start a small debate about the School merger/federation. It came out that St Neots Community College has got the £1 million debt paid off and £350,000 in Federation cost. This was seen as a plus to St Neots. I don't see this as a plus.

I though it was a good meeting. Residents do need to support this process and HDC and has to try other ways of publicising these meetings. I don't have any ideas. The only way I found out about this meeting was coming across it on the HDC website.

Next date: Thursday, 8th April 2010 - Venue to be confirmed

HDC Agenda for this meeting
HDC Neighbourhood Forums
*Cambridgeshire Police Authority