Herefordshire Council agrees to increase council tax by almost 5%.

Herefordshire Council has today agreed to increase council tax by almost 5%.

Full council backed the Conservative group’s budget for the next financial year with 29 votes in favour, seven against and four abstentions.

This means Band D property owners will be paying £1,514.70 to the county council from April – this is up £70.75 from last year.

The budget features £3.9m worth of savings and will mean an increase of council tax by 4.9% which includes a 2% increase to pay for adult social care.

Deputy leader Nigel Shaw, who said it was a privilege to present the budget, made reference to the £90m-worth of savings the council has made since 2010.

“The task of setting the budget was made easier by decisions made several years ago,” he said.

“This council has consistently delivered a balanced budget.”

The administration made amendments to their original budget proposals and suggested spending an extra £2m.

They proposed reversing £250,000-worth of cuts on the museums, libraries and archives service.

Councillors accepted an amendment to allocating £275,000 to the community transport grant and retaining £225,000 to go towards reduced costs of school transport.

It’s Our County councillor Anthony Powers said the administration had stolen the ideas from the alternative budget they proposed.

Their proposals also included an additional £2m worth of investment for the next financial year but this was rejected with 27 votes against, 15 in favour and two abstentions.

IOC co-leader Liz Harvey called out the ‘last minute amendments’ that were made to the administration’s proposals and said they were ‘riding roughshod’ over the authority’s constitution.

Their budget was largely in line with the administration’s proposals and its key principles included providing support for local communities, responding to global and local trends in environmental and demographic pressures and to work more closely with the city, market towns and parish councils.

Liberal Democrat leader Terry James said councillors needed to ‘get real’ about the effect the tax increase would have.

“It is going to hit a lot of people,” he said.

The council has made around £90m-worth of savings since 2010 and its general reserves are at £7.9m with around £42.5m earmarked reserves as of the end of the last financial year.