In a nutshell, the Council Tax bill increases every year, whilst the services delivered for it continually deteriorate.
That does appear to be true in some respects, but from the information CCBC provides it's difficult to see what impact the cuts have made over the past six years.
bear in mind also that there are NUMEROUS Council officials on more than £100,000 per year. Value for money?
And there we agree, and all this was forecast not that long ago when the plans to create CCBC were advanced, and many astute observers at the time pointed out that 'jobs for the boys' would become the order of the day. That happened - in spades - and now, of course, the current plan is to revert to more-or-less what existed before.
Traditionally, councils seem to pay their workers more than the average wage and there appear to be few - if any - assessments as to how the excessive salaries of these highly paid individuals are justified by their performance. But, as I've said before, I believe there's a lot wrong with the current system, some of which at least could be addressed by making council service mandatory. Bringing in
true democracy, where the council tax payers could vote out unpopular measures and lazy councillors, would be a hugely popular innovation, but that's never going to happen because our elected 'servants' are too terrified of the possible outcomes.
Back to the Council tax issues, however, and from a quick glance at the CCBC website it's as clear as mud:
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The pie chart provides a tiny overview, lacking in details, but the sectional expenditure chart is a little more detailed:
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What's more interesting is the origin of most of the money:
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so the total expenditure by the council is £210m, of which the lowly taxpayers contribute 21.4%. From the pie chart above, we know that C,E and P get a mere 11% overall, which equates to about 2.2% of the council tax payer's contribution and exactly what proportion of the 11% is set aside for cutting grass verges isn't shown, but a rough guess would be about 0.002%, so it's pretty clear that the council's priorities are not verging on the verges.