Herefordshire Council will ‘regretfully’ need to raise council tax

Council tax bills in Herefordshire look set to rise by the maximum 5 per cent next spring, higher than planned, following news of sharp cuts to the funding the county gets from central government.

The council’s Medium-Term Financial Strategy, approved back in February, anticipated a 3.99 per cent rise in households’ council tax from April.

But Cabinet member for finance Coun Pete Stoddart told colleagues last week that under the Government’s recent “Fairer Funding Review” of how it allocates cash to local authorities, “they expect the minimum level of council tax increase to be 4.99 per cent.

“No options; that’s how they’re basing their figures,” he said.

“We’d still love to have it 3.99 per cent, but increasingly it looks like we will not achieve that and it will be 4.99 per cent.”

Something similar happened last year, when the council again planned a 3.99 per cent rise, only for this to be scuppered by the withdrawal of the Government’s £7-million Rural Services Delivery Grant to the county in December, Coun Stoddart added.

Leader of the county’s minority Conservative administration Coun Jonathan Lester agreed that “we will have to review the decision to stay at 3.99 per cent”.

“That’s regrettable, but not of our making given the changes in Fairer Funding, in inverted commas.”

Coun Stoddart added the government’s model on which the changes are based “seems to be targeting us”.

“I could put a political hat on and say we we’re minority Blue rather than Red, and Labour are targeting urban areas because that’s where their voters are,” he said.

The council expects to hear from the Government in late December exactly how much it will get in the coming financial year.

It will then have to ready its revenue budget, which determines the council tax rates for the year ahead, before this is approved by councillors in February.