Welsh Conservatives to force Senedd vote on council tax hikes
Emily Price
Members of the Senedd are set to vote on whether Welsh councils should be compelled to use their cash reserves as a means to avoid council tax hikes.
The motion tabled by the Welsh Conservatives will be debated in Cardiff Bay on Wednesday (March 5).
The party says councils across Wales are sitting on a “£2bn cash mountain” whilst residents are facing an average council tax rise of 7.36% with some local authorities charging even more.
Wales’ 22 councils receive most of their funding from the Welsh Government, with additional revenue coming from council tax and business rates.
‘Flawed’
The Conservatives say the Welsh Government’s local government funding formula is flawed because it allows some local authorities to hold over £200m in reserves, creating funding gaps between neighbouring councils.
Local authorities were given a cash boost of £253m by Welsh ministers in last month’s draft budget – but councillors say this is not enough.
The Welsh Local Government Association has previously projected a funding gap of £560m with two Welsh councils saying they could be at risk of bankruptcy.
Councils often avoid using their reserves because they are intended to be a safety net for unforeseen expenses and emergencies such as flooding.
Some reserves are earmarked specifically for infrastructure projects or potential legal costs meaning they can’t be used for general spending.
Bills
Next week, the Tories will call on Welsh ministers to commission an independent review of the local government funding formula and to work with councils to ensure reserves are used to keep council tax bills low.
The motion will also call for the introduction of referendums for any local authority that proposes a council tax rise above 5%.
The Welsh Conservatives say local government in Wales needs to become “more efficient” with more cross-council working and sharing of resources and services.
Commenting ahead of the debate, Shadow Secretary for Housing and Local Government, Laura Anne Jones said: “Under the Welsh Labour Government, the Local Government Funding Formula is broken.
“It cannot be right that people in Wales are facing a 7% hike in their Council Tax, whilst Councils are sitting on over £2 billion pounds in usable reserves.
“In the Senedd next week, we’re calling on the Welsh Labour Government to fix Local Government in Wales by commissioning an independent review into the Local Government Funding Formula, whilst calling on Council Tax to be kept as low as possible, with usable reserves being used.”
The Welsh Government said: “Our Final Budget is providing more than £6bn to local government through the final Local Government Settlement as well as £1.3bn in additional specific grants.
“The setting of budgets, council tax and the level of reserves are matters for the elected members in each council.”
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They have thousands of people now working from home, leaving swathes of empty office space: that space – currently funded by the taxpayer – should be consolidated and either sold, or leased. Also, if they can afford to spend eye-watering sums on DEI non-jobs then they aren’t short of money. Try getting your local councillor to respond to either of these points and you likely get radio silence.
Rationalising the property portfolio including office space makes sense. It’s bad for the local economy to have property sitting empty if there’s a demand for it.
Many authorities are consolidating but the buildings are often old/historic with limited values as there is so much maintenance backlog
Hi Adrian, please can you provide links to the statistics and evidence to back up your wild claims that “thousands” of local council workers only work from home and the “eye-watering sums” they spend on DEI.
Years of austerity have obliterated any “non-jobs” that might have existed (debatable they ever did). Councils also (obviously) try to sell unused buildings and other assets, but it’s not always easy, or even possible. DEI is an acronym used in the USA, not the UK, and criticism of it has become a far-right dog whistle – it says a lot about the sort of news you are reading.
There are plenty of non-jobs throughout the public sector, and the county councils are no exception. In my county (Pembrokeshire), the Council headcount was 5,378 in 2018 and it is 6,100 now. A 13% rise in headcount to deliver reduced public services despite claiming to have made efficiency savings. The same is true for the UK civil service as a whole: 2.9 million employees in 2016, 3.8 million in 2024. A 31% increase in the number of people being paid by the taxpayer – no wonder the country is broke! What are all these people doing? Have you noticed a… Read more »
Surely you knew that taking back control would bloat the civil service? Slimming down government was the reason the Cons were so keen to outsource core government functions to Brussels in the first place.
When you talk about number of staff, are you referring to total number of staff or number of full time equivalent jobs? Because there is a difference.
Backup funds are important, I assume many cons are in business, do they run with zero £ backup?
I don’t like my bills this high but 14 years of austerity reaches to all parts of the UK through many systems. What with global warming hitting us harder, the Cons want to make repairs impossible?
Any private business that ran on a permanent deficit would fail: that’s the difference. The public sector is demonstrably wasteful and inefficient, but there’s a magic money tree called the tax payer. That’s why they feel free to waste money on DEI non-jobs and a ficticious climate catastrophe.
DEI Non-jobs?
Ficticious climate change.
Are you serious?
Send co-ordinates and I’ll make sure someone drops a handfull of carrots down the hole after you.
Part of the far right mantra. Climate change ain’t happening, you put on too many socks this morning.
Really funny when you hear st farridge of nige trying to explain it (he doesn’t understand it and it shows).
dei your new best word now is it? Sort show what you are. I don’t follow the far right but I know they are upset at this. Really only because they are vacuous and have to have people like farridge think for them.
So you think the private sector are a shining light? I point you in the direction of the water companies for a good example
It’s another example of the fiscal irresponsibility they’re well known for.
They are also looking at the total figure which for many authorities will include the reserves for a housing revenue reserve (council houses) and schools which cannot be used for general funding of the council.
The real problem is the Barnett Formula and the underfunding of Wales by the previous Conservative government.
14 years of austerity? The Tories left us with the highest public spending since the end of WWII.
Because they flatlined the economy with austerity.
Look at central government funding for local councils. It has never recovered to pre-Austerity levels.
Tory spending was all on dodgy contracts that paid donors and cronies huge sums of money for not much, if any, in return.
I know when the UK Government increases non-devolved taxes, then cut Wales block, that then affects Welsh Government coffers, who in turn give local authorities less money so they themselves lament the fact hy hiking rates to fill the shortfall in their budget. In some cases both are to blame for wastage. UK & Welsh government. Only difference is, where one does it covertly, the other, overtly that affects Wales. Whitehall says it gives Wales more money and the Welsh Government says money received has been in real terms cut. And the blame game ensued. But it’s what they, Welsh… Read more »
So once again the Conservative Party who always claim they want devolution from Cardiff Bay to local authorities now want the Welsh Government to tell all local authorities what to do with their cash reserves.
The “cash mountain” consists of reserves that are needed to manage finances effectively, especially as some projects can take many years. Anyone claiming that councils should just spend their reserves doesn’t understand local government finance.
Not a good idea to use reserves for day to day running expenses. What happens if an unexpected cost crops up: Will the Welsh Government then have to bail them out?