By Coun Gary Porter, leader of South Holland District Council
This is the first of a new regular column by district council cabinet members and I would like to take this opportunity to thank The Voice for giving us a voice.
Over the coming months different members will try to write interesting and sometimes provocative articles that will hopefully get you to either nod in agreement, laugh out loud or hastily scribe a letter to vent your anger at what has been said.
If it does nothing else other than make you do one of the above then I will consider it to have been a success.
As anyone who has been awake for more than a couple of hours this year will know, our council, along with all of the others in the country, is going to have a very tight financial settlement from the Chancellor.
The Department of Communities and Local Government (our main funding department) has been asked to model reductions of between 25 per cent and 40 cent over the life of this Parliament.
If I was a betting man (which I am not) I would guess the final figure would be closer to 30 per cent. These reductions are on top of the 40 per cent reductions to grant in the last Parliament and will inevitably mean some tough choices being made.
As you know, we have cut council tax every year for the last four years and froze it the year before that. The reason we did that was because the country was in recession and our instinct was that we shouldn’t add to the weekly pressure on household bills.
My personal preference is that we continue this course. I, and most of my colleagues, believe that you know better than us how to spend your money, so we should avoid taking it off of you if that is possible.
However, doing this, coupled with the level of grant reduction that we anticipate, will almost certainly result in some service reduction, so my question to you this week is this: should we cut council tax again, even if it means reducing some services?
Please respond via the letters page in The Voice by email here or write to The Spalding and South Holland Voice, Units 1&2 Winsover Centre, 14-16 Winsover Road, Spalding PE11 1EJ.
