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How your Council Tax is Calculated - Dawn Hoskins (20th Mar 2014 - 19:23:31) The precept (which is the budget for the year), is divided by the Tax-Base to arrive at the band D council tax figure. Our figures are thus: Precept of £262,475 and Tax base = 180. £262,475 ÷ 180 gives us the average band. The average band is calculated to be a ‘Band D’ Our band D is £1458. Everyone has a right to know the ‘ins and outs’ of every local council – to see if payments are justified. That is why so much advanced notice is given before the budget meetings in which these are to be discussed. As so few people attend meetings these days, the budgets are also published electronically. Ours is published here: http://bramshottandliphook-pc.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/2014-15.pdf It does not take much to skew figures. If for example a council has to take on an additional employee or if pension’s contributions increase that can have a massive effect. Some parishes own village halls – some don’t & the cost of utilities can affect figures dramatically. Based on published figures which are available to all, we can see quite easily how we have been affected per household. Unlike some parishes that have few (or none) public buildings, we are very lucky to have the Millennium Centre which houses the Citizens Advice Bureau and the Heritage Centre. It is well used and loved, but of course it costs to heat it and light it. Our utilities have increased by about £3,500. This is not a cost that the Council has any influence in. Staff costs have increased over the employee base, this is a combination of planning for contributory pension increases and pay rises. The main skew to these figures is that when we lost a member of staff at the Millennium Hall (last year) he was not replaced but the position was put into a split job-share role. This was not a long-term view last year but a short-term fix to prevent a redundancy situation – so that had to be fixed. Due to all of the re-jigging the salary increase over all of the employees rose by £34,600. Radford park has (and will continue to see) improvements at the grounds and car parks, this has been estimated at £18,031. The general public have been overwhelmingly supportive of maintaining Radford Park. The budget includes the cost of purchasing equipment to enable the parish to take part in the Speed Watch programme. This was included as there has been a general outcry over speeding issues in the village and its surrounds. This cost was approx £5,000. The extra costs (gone into in minute detail in the budget) are listed above, and the resulting costs raise our payments by approximately £1 per a month more than last year.

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