Cambridgeshire County Council considering maximum tax rise

It could be an increase of nearly 5% and see people £76 more a year.

2% of the increase is dedicated towards funding adult social care services.

The county council is proposing increasing its share of council tax by 4.99 per cent, which would see a Band D household pay £76.95 more a year to the authority.

A report published by the county council said it would have to plug a funding gap of £74.2-million next year.

Taking into account a maximum council tax increase, the authority has said this would still leave a gap of £43.3-million.

The county council is proposing to plug this hole through using £6.5-million of its reserves, and finding an additional £17.2million of income from grant, fees and charges.

Leader of Cambridgeshire County Council, Lucy Nethsingha: 

"I think there is huge concern, not only in Cambridgeshire but across the whole of the local government sector, about how sustainable our budgets are for coming years.

"I think there is not much question really that either there needs to be some rethinking at government level about how our income comes in and what it is made up of, or what services we are expected to deliver.

"At the moment we are squeezed between very little flexibility in terms of our income and extremely high expectations and legal requirements about what we have to deliver.

"If you look at the rising costs of children’s social care in particular, also home to school transport, we have statutory obligations to provide for them, but the income is not keeping up with it.

"Cambridgeshire is in that picture, we are not in front of the pack of people’s budgets not being sustainable next year, or the year after, but we will be in that position at some point if that does not change."

The authority has also identified £17.6-million of savings it is proposing to make, but this still leaves the county council with a £2-million funding gap for next year.

The leadership said it will not know how much funding it will receive from central government until next week, but said it is hoping it will include additional funding to plug the remaining gap.