| Topic: | How the cut in Council tax gets paid for | |
| Posted by: | Stephen Cowan | |
| Date/Time: | 30/03/09 23:54:00 |
| Dear All The point about Labour putting Council Tax up by £700 is thoroughly dishonest and not in the slightest bit true. H&F Council’s official papers for 22nd February 2006 show that the last Labour Administration had introduced real terms cuts in council tax and hoped to find further reductions. The Council’s own 2006 papers show that the Council Tax cuts were planned to continue up until 2009 at least. You can follow this link below to go to the official Council papers. The info is on web page 14 (hard copy page 198). There you will see that tax would have increased by 1.5% which is around £13 per year: http://www.lbhf.gov.uk/Images/CA20062202_tcm21-51589.pdf I also write about it here: http://thecowanreport.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-gullible-do-h-conservatives-think.html I thought I may be able to add some more facts which will allow people to make their own minds up about what’s happening in this borough. The Conservatives have put Meals on Wheels up by £547 – a result of pensioners being given inflation busting rises each and every year since the Tories won control of the Council on 4th May 2006. I wrote to David Cameron to ask him if he supported this approach. He didn’t reply which I guess means he does. If you email me at; stephen.cowan@lbhf.gov.uk; Ill send a copy of my Cameron letter to you. However, the Tories have also: • Cut £905k from the Vulnerable Children’s budget and then refused to guarantee it wouldn’t be to the detriment of the children in the borough’s care • Introduced a brand new £12.41 hourly home care charge for the elderly, sick and disabled • Creamed off £740,000.00 of government money meant to go to local schools and added a further £300k in admin cost arguing that our schools balances are rich enough • Cancelled the garden waste service with £100 fines being discussed for putting out garden refuse with your litter • Put children’s out-of-hours play services charges up by 121% • Put parking charges up by 12.5% and parking fines up by 50% • For the last three years the Tories only spent £750k out of £189million Council budget on policing despite promising that this would be their number one priority. They did marginally increase the budget this year after a campaign from residents, local businesses and the Opposition forced them to do it but are still left in a position where the Opposition would invest more on policing and community safety if elected to form the Administration next year. The Tories spend around £2.7million to give band D residents an annual Council Tax reduction of about £20 a year (putting what they spend on policing into some perspective). They spend vast amounts of money on PR, publishing their PRAVDA style newspaper and even paying for advertising on tubes and ad vans. They also waste millions of pounds on a host of other ventures too and have given themselves 14% and 18% salary raises in their first two years. Its also worth noting that £12million of the £20million that the Tories say they used to pay off debt was actually paid off by the last Administration - not the Tories. I’m not against everything the Tories are doing but I am against their attacks on the vulnerable children budget, the vast extra cost for pensioners, the sick and our disabled fellow residents; their under-investment in crime fighting; as well as other things such as offering sites across the borough (which includes current resident’s homes) to property speculators - and actually flying to Cannes on the French Riviera at our expense to do so. Hope this helps With best wishes Cllr. Stephen Cowan Leader of the Opposition The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham |