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by Lib Dem team on 20 December, 2017
The Conservatives yesterday announced that both Stockport Council and the Mayor of Greater Manchester would have to put up Council Tax to fund local services, including policing.
Cllr Iain Roberts said “Our Council Tax bill will come from Stockport Council in April, but these increases are straight from the Conservatives. Local councils have faced bigger cuts than almost any other part of Government. The Conservatives hope that residents will blame their local councils when they get the bills, but it’s clear where the real responsibility lies.”
Greater Manchester Police are facing a real-terms cut of £6.93m next year. Yesterday the government announced that core funding for police budgets will remain exactly the same as last year. Taking into account inflation, that means Greater Manchester Police will face a real-terms cut of £6.93m.
The additional £270m of funding the government claims to be investing in the police nationally depends entirely on local Police and Crime Commissioners raising the police precept in their areas, which the Liberal Democrats have branded a “stealth council tax rise”.
20 Comments
There are flats similar to mine (The Hollies) and others smaller than mine (The Aspens) in Gatley, both of which suffer from a higher Council Tax band (they being in B)!
One always knew Stocky Council was a rip off, but, this blatant ‘profiteering’ beggars belief!!
So glad to now be living in a cheaper but better locality (in Cheshire ‘proper’!).
The Council doesn’t set council tax bands – that’s done by a Government body. You can appeal if you think you’re in the wrong band. The band, by law, is based on the value of the property in 1991 prices. So its the value of a home, not the size, that determines the council tax band.
Why is Stockport by far the most EXPENSIVE suburb of Greater Manchester to live in terms of council tax? Whether its Lib Dem run, Labour of Tories, it makes little difference … where does all the money go, why are we so far worse off than the other nine Greater Manchester boroughs!
Hi Dillon,
Under the Lib Dems, Stockport was the second *lowest* spending borough in Greater Manchester. It probably still is. It spends less per head than anywhere except Trafford.
So why is council tax higher? Simply because we get less money from the Government. Manchester City spend much more than Stockport, but they also get much more from the Government, so they don’t need to charge as much council tax.
It’s frustrating: Stockport can be efficient, getting good value for money and still has to charge higher council tax to make the numbers add up.
I don’t believe that for a minute Iain. There’s no comparitive, Manchester Council completely different to Stockport; city centre, airport … I’ve had 4 missed bin cillections since October, there’s street lights out all over the place despite the Lib Dems spending multi-million £ on these new ‘self assessing’ lights, another waste of taxpayers money. How about the less affluent suburbs; Oldham, Rochdale, Bolton … you’re really telling us Stockport is better off and better run?
Hi Jill – I’m not commenting on how well our Labour-run council is currently doing at providing services. I’m making the simple, factual point that Stockport spends less per head than almost any other Greater Manchester council.
Iain, what a rubbish and disrepectful answer. Do you really think that we’re all so simple to believe that? This council, under Lib Dem control wasted millions of pounds. Same continues under Labour leadership, total waste of taxpayers money that would have funded the gap. Stop blaming central Government, utterly unacceptable.
Hi Carole – my answer is completely true. Under the Lib Dems Stockport was one of the lowest spending councils in Greater Manchester. The Conservatives on the council have had years to say where all this wasted money is, and to propose an alternative budget. You know what – they never have. I wonder why that could be!
To keep working this last year, I’ve had to accept a pay cut, not just a pay freeze, a pay cut !! Where exactly am I meant to find the money for things like this ?
Some of the answers here demonstrate why the Tories get in. Read the words People, FUNDING COMES FROM CENTRAL GOVERNMENT – or not in this case. Don’t believe everything you read in the Mail and Torygraph!!
Typical Iain – blame the Tories for everything – when you were in charge of Stockport you wasted an awful lot of money in your self-promotion – namely the Stockport Review which you issued every two months! I still have some of your propaganda such as ‘Stockport what a great place to live.’. Not to mention the dozens of photos of LibDem councillors performing really strategic functions such as planting trees.
A few years back I once wrote to your leader at the time (Goddard?) and complained and all I got back some demeaning comment like ‘it is nice to hear from our residents’.
Lowest spending and worst infrastructure. Never mind. And then they bought Edgely Park and Merseyway
Iain is factually correct but its also factually correct that Council Emploter Pension costs are a large fraction of the council tax take.
It seems unfair that many of us have poor or no pensions but are forced (you go to jail if you don’t pay your Council Tax) to provide gold plated pensions to Council workers who also usually have excellent working conditions and in practice are almost impossible to sack however poorly they perform.
As for the purchase of Mersey Square – went there for the first time in years last week – what a dump – its basically horrible – they should face reality and minimise any further expenditure/debt on this.
Hi Frederick,
All employers have to provide work pensions – public and private sector. That’s the law. Council pensions are not gold plated these days, and I can assure you that council employees can lose their jobs (in Stockport alone hundreds have over the last few years). It’s simply not true that working for a council is “gold plated” these days.
On Merseyway and Mersey Square, we bought it as a council *because* private owners had failed to invest properly in it. That was the whole point. It needs investment and that can transform it, so let’s do the right thing.
Is it beyond the wit of man for our councillors past and present to demand more money from the government rather than complaining we are not getting enough. I once raised this with Ian who said that the formula for calculating what each council gets was very complicated and that hardly anyone understood it.
Not at all – we can “demand” all we like. In fact we do, not just as local councillors but through the Local Government Association which is the body that represents all councils and all parties. The fact that the Government rejects most of the calls from the LGA is probably an indication of how difficult it can be to actually get them to change their minds.
Of course a key part of making any demand has to be to show that what we are getting now is not enough. It would be a bit daft if our message to Government was “everything’s fine, but can we have some more money anyway.”
The reality is that we *do* need more money, we *do* ask for it and we *do* get turned down. The people with the power to change that are the Government, and the people with the power to change the Government are voters in places like Cheadle.
The Lib Dems Councillors only have themselves to blame for the non election of their candidate for Member of Parliamnet!
(In my opinion).
Having spoken to a lot of voters, most appreciated the work the Lib Dem team do, and accept that the council has limited resources and not everything we want to do can be done. The General Election was a lot more about whether people wanted Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister.
And you, the Lib Dems, made sure that the Conservative candidate won in Stockport due to your campaigning to vote against the Labour candidate, how ironic!
Hi Simeon – Stockport constituency has a Labour MP. In our local Cheadle constituency, it was a close fight between the Lib Dems and Conservatives, with Labour in a poor third place.