MP for Wyre Forest, Mark Garnier, writes for the Standard.
SO, IT IS official. As of last week’s Worcestershire County Council budget meeting, your county council tax will go up by nine per cent.
In addition, you will have to pay your local Wyre Forest District Council tax (up an inflation linked 2.9 per cent), the fire authority precept, and the police precept.
But it is the county council tax that will stick in the throat the most.
At last year’s county council elections, we were promised – promised – that council tax would go down here in Worcestershire, by Reform. Reform won the election, taking minority control of the council, and they whacked up council tax by nine per cent.
To be fair, they were supported from the wider political arena. As a minority administration, they needed the support of another political party to get their inflation smashing budget through.
Step forward the Liberal Democrats.
Central government had passed on a road improvement fund.
This was intended to go throughout the whole county, sorting out repairs and improvements on our network of local roads.
But the Lib Dems will always put their interests first and they did a deal with Reform. In return for channeling this countywide road budget to their own areas, they agreed to not stand in the way of Reform.
So, when the votes came through for the allocation of road funding to a bridge in Pershore, a diversion of money from Redditch Station to some footpaths, some street improvements and a cycleway, and some Bromsgrove improvements – all Lib Dem held areas – Reform supported their votes.
And when it came to the vote on the whole budget, with the nine per cent increase, Lib Dems left the room, thus giving Reform the majority it needed to get their budget through.
As it turns out, we have been given the worse county council budget anywhere in the country. Reform have let us down here more than they have let people down anywhere else in the country.
Who knows how this will end?
But I completely understand why people want a change from the traditional political order.
Last week’s Manchester by-election certainly showed Keir Starmer’s Labour Party what the electorate think of it, whilst the 2024 general election showed us Conservatives just how unpopular we had become with infighting.
But will people be prepared to pay a far higher tax than they would otherwise? We shall see.
