Monmouthshire council tax payers set to be clobbered again
Abergavenny Chronicle - 11 December 2003

A ‘ difficult and challenging ’ local government settlement for Monmouthshire will again see the council struggling to reconcile its National Assembly allowance with its needs.

After the settlement was announced, Monmouthshire County Council’s finance chief, Steve Greenslade said it was likely that council tax would increase even more than had originally predicted when the provisional settlement was published.

“This increase of just 3.6 per cent in external funding places Monmouthshire firmly at the bottom of the pile again, with the lowest settlement per head in Wales” said Mr Greenslade. “This could lead to a larger than average council tax increase,” he said.

Mr Greenslade warned Monmouthshire residents could expect increases of around 7.5 per cent or even more. The settlement comes as a blow for Monmouthshire County Council, which is already struggling to cope with massive overspending in all its directorates.

A recent warning of an overspend of more than £400,000 in the social services budget, led council leaders to look at ways of identifying and controlling possible overspends in all areas.

A report to cabinet’s December meeting revealed that ‘budget pressure’ of more than £900,000 was expected even after corporate directors had made efforts to reduce potential overspends. It was recommended that the ‘unavoidable’ pressures should be funded from the council’s general reserve.

“The reserve position is now starting to cause some concern as this is the third year we’ve experienced serious overspending due to the question of Monmouthshire’s funding allocation,” said Mr Greenslade.

“Despite our efforts to bolster our reserves we are approaching the point where this can’t happen any longer,” he said.

Council leader, Councillor David Waring congratulated officers on reducing the projected overspend from £1.5 million to £930,000. “The problems lies in areas like social services where there things happen you just can’t budget for,” he said.

Councillor Rob Griffiths said over spends were a direct result of National Assembly underfunding and called for attention to be paid to the ‘particular needs of Monmouthshire.’

Related articles:

* MCC’s council tax bills set to rise by 14 per cent
* Service cuts or council tax hike as Assembly funding for MCC is called ‘bad news’
* Monmouthshire council tax payers set to be clobbered again

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