Papers for this week’s North Herts Council cabinet meeting reveal that, after pushing through a 3.9% increase in Council Tax in February, the council has now discovered that the increase could have been much lower. The council spent nearly £200,000 less than expected last year – enough to reduce the council tax rise by 2%. 

Liberal Democrat leader of the opposition on the council, Steve Jarvis said, “North Herts has one of the highest levels of council tax in the area and a track record of big increases.  Now it is clear that this year’s rise could actually been much lower, with no impact on local services. The Conservatives who run the council say that they are being prudent, but it’s easy to be prudent when somebody else picks up the bill. It’s time they recognised that they are giving local people a bad deal and brought their performance into line with other councils.” 

Liberal Democrats proposed further savings in spending on new computers and software at the time of the budget. Coupled with the savings that have now been discovered these could have resulted in a tax rise of less than 1.5%. Neighbouring St.Albans council, which is run by the Liberal Democrats, did not increase its council tax at all this year.

North Herts Homes’ appeal against the District Council’s refusal of planning permission has been allowed by the planning inspectorate.

This was always likely since the District Council really had no legitimate grounds for refusing the application.

Hopefully North Herts Homes will now make an early start on building so that six local families can benefit.

The result of the County Council election in North Herts Rural was:

Conservative  2281 (+0.0%)
Ian Simpson   2208 (+3.1%)
Green                 379 (+3.7%)
Labour               255 (-7.1%)

Conservative majority 73

Thanks to all those of you who supported Ian Simpson.

If a quarter of those who voted Green had supported Ian we would have a much greener county councillor than is now the case.

Elsewhere in Herts the Liberal Democrats gained three seats and are now the official opposition. Unfortunately the Conservatives have a big majority so no doubt the road repairs will return to their nomal, non-election standard pretty quickly!

Although the roads are a County Council responsibility I don’t think that this can be allowed to happen so I will be taking up Ian’s campaign to get them to do the job properly all year round, not just for a couple of months before the elections.

If you want to know more about this please contact me at steve@sjarvis.cix.co.uk.