Council explains details of tax hike after online backlash

Alec Doyle, local democracy reporter

Senior councillors and financial officers have defended an increase to council tax of 9.5% following an online backlash.

Since the full council voted to raise council tax by 9.5% for 2025/26 and to cut the schools budget by 2.5%, a petition has been launched at Change.org, attracting over 1,500 signatures asking Flintshire County Council to rethink the increase.

There has also been a furious reaction on social media, with residents on Facebook accusing councillors of ‘robbing’ them and even branding the council’s decisions as ‘atrocities’.

Legal responsibility

But council officials argued that – facing a deficit of £23 million -their legal responsibility to balance the budget left them with no choice.

So concerned was Flintshire County Council leader Cllr Dave Hughes about the worst of the online comments, he brought key councillors and officers together to combat what he called ‘misinformation’ online and explain why the decision had been made.

“Some of the messages we have seen online, including some of the direct messages to councillors, have been very worrying,” he said. “We have also seen documents circulating online that look like official council documents recording how people have voted. They have been annotated with language the council would never use – like ‘council tax hike’ – which are clearly designed to inflame tensions.

“There is a lot of misinformation being put out so we wanted to be an open book and show exactly what the situation was.”

In a document prepared by deputy leader Cllr Richard Jones and Chief Finance Officer Gary Ferguson, the council laid out the financial position of the council and why Flintshire’s council tax had to be set at that level.

The council has 6,000 employees and in 2024/25 had an annual budget of £368 million to provide over 600 services to residents. Each year 70% of its funding comes from the Welsh Local Government Settlement while 30% comes from council tax.

Draft settlement

On December 11 the council was informed what the Welsh Government’s draft settlement would be. It was calculated for each authority based on an assumption that council tax would increase by 10.2%. At the same time the council saw its budget deficit increase to £47.5m as demand on social care services grew.

The draft settlement offered Flintshire £274.7m. That was an increase of just 3.3%. Despite a year of spending cuts across the county, Flintshire’s annual cost base has increased by 13%, leaving a significant gap of around £23m.

Flintshire – which has historically been a low-funded authority – campaigned with other councils upset about the settlement. It asked the Welsh Government to give all council’s at least the average uplift – 4.45%. That would mean an additional £27m for Flintshire and would have allowed the authority to offer a smaller council tax increase.

Instead the Welsh Government set a ‘funding floor’ at 3.8%, giving Flintshire just £1.2m extra in the final settlement.

Reserves

Finally Flintshire found itself with historically low levels of reserves, after a number of major weather events, plus the need to clear up an illegal waste site at Queensferry. Holding just £2.7m in reserves means one major setback – such as the Welsh Government not fully-funding the national insurance rise for council employees – could wipe out the pot leaving Flintshire unable to spend money on gritting during a cold snap or repairs after a major storm.

If the council had been unable to set a balanced budget by March 10, the council would have become subject to a Section 114 notice.

Section 114 is commonly referred to as a bankruptcy notice – but in reality it hands control of council spending and taxation over to administrators. They aim to get the council’s finances in order quickly by any means necessary. That would likely mean deeper cost-cutting, loss of services and higher council tax rates than were approved last week.

Even a £1 overspend in the budget would have triggered that sanction.

“We had a legal duty to set a balanced budget by March 10,” said Mr Ferguson. “If we had not agreed the budget as it was presented last week we would have had to go away and propose different measures to balance it.

“If members had refused to accept it all the way up to the deadline I’d have had to issue a Section 114 notice. Our planned spend for next year would not be consistent with the amount of funding we expected to get in because we hadn’t approved a council tax increase.”

Among the cuts originally suggested but scrapped after debate in scrutiny were the authority’s bus subsidy – as that would have disproportionately impacted vulnerable rural residents – and Free School Meals during school holidays – which would have impacted vulnerable families.

Cllr Jones – also the councillor responsible for Transformation – said that showed the authority had listened to the concerns of scrutiny committees – but added that no significant alternative budget had been proposed by those opposed to the budget in the chamber.

“We took the concerns we heard about those cuts seriously,” he said. “We decided that we needed to keep those costs in the budget as people need those things.

“There has been a lot of criticism in the last week and that’s fair enough. But I would say that at no point has a credible alternative budget been proposed that balances the budget.

“Last week a proposition was made to reallocate the additional £1.2 million to reduce council tax and support education. Another was made to reallocate £40,000. We’re talking about a budget of hundreds of millions. Those figures do not come close to balancing the budget without this tax rise.

“The numbers show a clear north-south divide,” said Finance and Social Value cabinet member Cllr Paul Johnson. “I broke down the numbers and if you look at all the councils that proposed a 7.5% council tax increase or lower, they are all in the south apart from Denbighshire.

“Every council in North and Mid Wales has had to propose a council tax increase of more than 7.5% and in the while the average in the south is 6.1%.

“I did see a comment online that we don’t understand what real people are going through. But we do, because we are real people. These decisions affect our lives too.”

Upset

Cllr Hughes said he understood that people were deeply upset about the council tax increase.

“We understand people are upset,” he said. “We are upset. We didn’t want to increase council tax.

“But we have been through the reasons for it. We once again received a below-average settlement from the Welsh Government.

“Flintshire is consistently underfunded and we’ve reached a point where we have no choice.

“It’s important that we listen to people’s concerns, but the level of aggression we are seeing online is a big worry. I’m happy to debate the issues and for people to tell us we are wrong and we should be doing something differently, but it needs to be done in a civil manner.”