View Full Version : Council...????
Can anyone tell me what has happened to the skip service that was situated beside the Ellen Bridge in Thurso every weekend...or has the council cut this service too!! http://forum.caithness.org/images/icons/icon8.gif and while I'm having a good moan does anyone else think that we are being royaly ripped of with the amount of council tax we are being charged!!!
Council tax!! that is a bloody con they are really taking the piss with that [mad]
Glad you agree, I reckon the public should unite and tell them what to do with their council tax, the councillers seem to be doing alright, with their fancy cars and expense accounts. my council tax bill for this year will be left unpayed, not just as a protest but because I cant keep up with their constant demands for more...where is it all going? we have roads full of potholes and they seem to be cutting services so fast that young people will start leaving caithness in the droves ...or is that what they want?
I'm paying £1000 a year for what ? To get my bins emptyed once a week .It's a JOKE and half of my rubbish is getting reclycled . It would more like it if they spent as much money the roads as they did advertising the reclycle campain. I'am not saying that i disagree with the reclycling as i'm all for it but they should be spending more money on fixing all the pot holes that seem to be popping up everywhere like rabbits holes it seems to be spearding like wild fire lately . I think it could be a case of neglect . So why don't we start neglecting there payments .
in answer to the first question - the skip service has been replaced with new recycling centre and Janetstown, it's great - there are several skips for different things and the man tells you which one to put things in, there is even one for donations to homeaid.
re council tax - yes it is annoying that prices keep increasing but honestly compared to other areas we don't know we're living. the council tax does not just pay for your bins to be emptied - it pays for education, street lighting, social work, libraries, swimming pools etc and much more - okay so maybe we don't all use these facilities but they are there if we choose to do so. Re pot holes - having been down south quite a bit recently I can honestly say, believe it or not, we have some of the best kept roads in the country - try driving in Strathclyde!
willowbankbear
27-Mar-06, 11:05
[
month ban comin up!![lol] [lol] [lol]
I'm paying £1000 a year for what ? .
You're paying 1000 pounds/year to cover a pensions deficit![mad]
Marty McFly
27-Mar-06, 11:37
You're paying 1000 pounds/year to cover a pensions deficit![mad]
...and a strike tomorrow when no bins will be emptied! [mad]
Bill Fernie
27-Mar-06, 16:23
There is a considerable amount of information on what the council spends money on over at the Council web site.
These leaflets may give some idea of the range of services -
http://www.highland.gov.uk/fin/revenues/ctaxforms/simple-guide-to-counciltax.pdf
http://www.highland.gov.uk/fin/revenues/ctaxforms/council-tax-booklet2006-2007.pdf
It is also important to remember when looking at what the council spends where the money comes from. Most of it does not come from Council Tax. It comes from the government block grant. This means that if the block grant settled by the Scottish Executive is reduced or does not fully take account of inflation the council can either cut services or increase the council tax. Since the council tax is the lower of the main amounts it has to spend there is little room for manouvre. The situation for the next two years is that budgets are being tightened maening there will be cuts and there will be increases in council tax. It is many years since there was no increase in council tax in Highland or most councils. The councils who have managed to have no increases this year have done so by using reserves and cutting services. How long they can continue doing that remains to be seen
See 2005 - 06 Figures
Highland Council Spending £ 506,197 (millions)
Total spending on services for financial year 2005/2006 (excluding Council
Housing )
Less
Income from Service Charges-£40,668 (millions)
Government Grants-£297,236 (millions)
Non-Domestic Rates-£78,428 (millions)
Contribution from balances-£0.918 (millions)
Total Amount Needed from Council Tax £88.947 (millions)
On councillors doing quite well. It should be remembered that most councillors are older people who have already had careers and therefor have pensions or indeed still work and have a wage from their job or income from other self employment.
One of the problems in getting people to stand as councillors has been alluded to in reports by the Scottish Executive that the remuneration for councillors is too low to attract sufficent people to stand. The new levels accepted last week by the minister will more than double the level of payment to over £15000, per annum still almost £5000 lower than the recommendation. Since the average number of hours worked by councillors was said to be in excess of 35 hours with some much greater than that and some lower it remians to be seen if the new levels of payment will attract more people to stand and specificlly more women who are there in equal numbers.
As for expenses they are to be altered and in future payments on actual costs ratherthan flat rate payments will come in. Mileage expenses are to be reduced after the first 10,000 miles and councils may offer to provide leased cars for business use only for councillors who live far from the places they most have meetings in just as they already do for certain categories of staff. Caithness councillors for example have amongst the longest distances to travel to Inverness. There are no payments for time spent in travelling. Caithness councillors and others living a long way away spend agreat deal of time travelling to meetings in Inverness and other parts of the Highlands as well as locally.
Fortunately we still live in a democracy and it is open for anyone to stand for elction and it might be possible for someone to stand on a no increase in council tax ticket and get elected as long as they spell out what they intend to reduce spending on and it seems a reasonable course of action. The problem is no one wants their local school, nursery, play group, old folks home and so on to be affected as we have seen from recent moves by the council to save money. Education and Social Work are heavy on spending as they affect large numbers of the community and it is not an easy task to find savings in these budgets.
Water charges are also included on the council tax bills but are not the resposibility of the council. These charges are collected on behalf of Scottish Water and is legacy of the times when the council was responsible for water. There may come a time when water charges come spearately like gas and elctricity bills. Up until now it has been a convenient way to collect the money and any other way might be more expensive.
Refusing to pay the council tax is not really an answer as If enough people refuse then this will affect cash flow and costs would go up. Collection charges would also be put on as penalty on those that refuse to pay. If more people paid their council tax on time and less people were guilty of non-payment than at present then things would be that much better. As it is the council has had increasing success in pursuing non-payers and that is only fair on eveyone else who pays their council tax on time.
It is also impotant to remember that times have changed and councils budgets are different to they way they were many years ago. Government now encourages the use of voluntary groups and promotes money via the lottery and whole host of other bodies rather than channeling it through councils as it used to do. Essentially the council has had to cut its cloth and will continue to have to do so.
There are great many programmes where the council is trying to spend money to help people in their daily lives. I will give one example. The council has as part of its housing service a Warm and Dry budget. Caithness has areas of Fuel poverty and one in particular Pulteneytown shows to be more disadvanteged than some others. consequently the council agreed to pay £200,000 a year towards the Caithness Heat and Power Company to provide a better form of heating and at lower costs to people in that area. The total budget for this scheme is £.5 million. If it proves to be asuccessit is homes to spread the schem out beyond the intial pilot area. The hiope is that people within that schem will have an excelent standard of heating in their homes 24 hour saday and at less cost than existing bills. This will have huge affect on the elederly and families and indeed anyone else living in that area. This and many other things the council does is aimed at imroving living conditions. That is but one example of where a small part of council tax money is going. It is complex situation as even in that one scheme there are several funding sources and funders apart form the council tax.
In the end a big question always is what woud dpeople who wish to pay less council tax wish to see cut or reduced in some way to achieve a lower level of council tax. From time to time councils ask council tax payers as in fact they did several years ago when Peter Peacock was the convenor of Highland council. Mainly we will have the same services as many are essential but at what level may be the bigger question.
There never has been a time when thes things were simple. They are not now and are unlikely to become so. They are surrounded by levels of pay for staff, levels of payments for services. Should we privatise or keeep services in the public sector. The recent hints that the Highland council might privatise more of its care homes for the elderly have been met by howls of protest. Currently the private secor offer a cheaper alternative but the public in the areas where this has been proposed do not appear to be happy with this proposal. Play Groups and nurseries under threat have also had people out with petitions and so on. There may well be some smaller services that could be axed but in the main they would not meet the budget deficits gaps in council spending in many parts of Scotland including Highland.
No one likes paying tax but it is the way that all countries in the West fund there services and run their countries. Other systems look poor by comparison although I would be interested to hear of alternatives.
[quote=Bill Fernie]There is a considerable amount of information on what the council spends money on over at the Council web site.
These leaflets may give some idea of the range of services -
http://www.highland.gov.uk/fin/reven...counciltax.pdf
http://www.highland.gov.uk/fin/reven...t2006-2007.pdf
It is also important to remember when looking at what the council spends where the money comes from. Most of it does not come from Council Tax. It comes from the government block grant. This means that if the block grant settled by the Scottish Executive is reduced or does not fully take account of inflation the council can either cut services or increase the council tax. Since the council tax is the lower of the main amounts it has to spend there is little room for manouvre. The situation for the next two years is that budgets are being tightened maening there will be cuts and there will be increases in council tax. It is many years since there was no increase in council tax in Highland or most councils. The councils who have managed to have no increases this year have done so by using reserves and cutting services. How long they can continue doing that remains to be seen
See 2005 - 06 Figures
Highland Council Spending £ 506,197 (millions)
Total spending on services for financial year 2005/2006 (excluding Council
Housing )
Less
Income from Service Charges-£40,668 (millions)
Government Grants-£297,236 (millions)
Non-Domestic Rates-£78,428 (millions)
Contribution from balances-£0.918 (millions)
Total Amount Needed from Council Tax £88.947 (millions)
On councillors doing quite well. It should be remembered that most councillors are older people who have already had careers and therefor have pensions or indeed still work and have a wage from their job or income from other self employment.
One of the problems in getting people to stand as councillors has been alluded to in reports by the Scottish Executive that the remuneration for councillors is too low to attract sufficent people to stand. The new levels accepted last week by the minister will more than double the level of payment to over £15000, per annum still almost £5000 lower than the recommendation. Since the average number of hours worked by councillors was said to be in excess of 35 hours with some much greater than that and some lower it remians to be seen if the new levels of payment will attract more people to stand and specificlly more women who are there in equal numbers.
As for expenses they are to be altered and in future payments on actual costs ratherthan flat rate payments will come in. Mileage expenses are to be reduced after the first 10,000 miles and councils may offer to provide leased cars for business use only for councillors who live far from the places they most have meetings in just as they already do for certain categories of staff. Caithness councillors for example have amongst the longest distances to travel to Inverness. There are no payments for time spent in travelling. Caithness councillors and others living a long way away spend agreat deal of time travelling to meetings in Inverness and other parts of the Highlands as well as locally.
Fortunately we still live in a democracy and it is open for anyone to stand for elction and it might be possible for someone to stand on a no increase in council tax ticket and get elected as long as they spell out what they intend to reduce spending on and it seems a reasonable course of action. The problem is no one wants their local school, nursery, play group, old folks home and so on to be affected as we have seen from recent moves by the council to save money. Education and Social Work are heavy on spending as they affect large numbers of the community and it is not an easy task to find savings in these budgets.
Water charges are also included on the council tax bills but are not the resposibility of the council. These charges are collected on behalf of Scottish Water and is legacy of the times when the council was responsible for water. There may come a time when water charges come spearately like gas and elctricity bills. Up until now it has been a convenient way to collect the money and any other way might be more expensive.
Refusing to pay the council tax is not really an answer as If enough people refuse then this will affect cash flow and costs would go up. Collection charges would also be put on as penalty on those that refuse to pay. If more people paid their council tax on time and less people were guilty of non-payment than at present then things would be that much better. As it is the council has had increasing success in pursuing non-payers and that is only fair on eveyone else who pays their council tax on time.
It is also impotant to remember that times have changed and councils budgets are different to they way they were many years ago. Government now encourages the use of voluntary groups and promotes money via the lottery and whole host of other bodies rather than channeling it through councils as it used to do. Essentially the council has had to cut its cloth and will continue to have to do so.
There are great many programmes where the council is trying to spend money to help people in their daily lives. I will give one example. The council has as part of its housing service a Warm and Dry budget. Caithness has areas of Fuel poverty and one in particular Pulteneytown shows to be more disadvanteged than some others. consequently the council agreed to pay £200,000 a year towards the Caithness Heat and Power Company to provide a better form of heating and at lower costs to people in that area. The total budget for this scheme is £.5 million. If it proves to be asuccessit is homes to spread the schem out beyond the intial pilot area. The hiope is that people within that schem will have an excelent standard of heating in their homes 24 hour saday and at less cost than existing bills. This will have huge affect on the elederly and families and indeed anyone else living in that area. This and many other things the council does is aimed at imroving living conditions. That is but one example of where a small part of council tax money is going. It is complex situation as even in that one scheme there are several funding sources and funders apart form the council tax.
In the end a big question always is what woud dpeople who wish to pay less council tax wish to see cut or reduced in some way to achieve a lower level of council tax. From time to time councils ask council tax payers as in fact they did several years ago when Peter Peacock was the convenor of Highland council. Mainly we will have the same services as many are essential but at what level may be the bigger question.
There never has been a time when thes things were simple. They are not now and are unlikely to become so. They are surrounded by levels of pay for staff, levels of payments for services. Should we privatise or keeep services in the public sector. The recent hints that the Highland council might privatise more of its care homes for the elderly have been met by howls of protest. Currently the private secor offer a cheaper alternative but the public in the areas where this has been proposed do not appear to be happy with this proposal. Play Groups and nurseries under threat have also had people out with petitions and so on. There may well be some smaller services that could be axed but in the main they would not meet the budget deficits gaps in council spending in many parts of Scotland including Highland.
No one likes paying tax but it is the way that all countries in the West fund there services and run their countries. Other systems look poor by comparison although I would be interested to hear of alternatives.
Bill edited his spelling as first attempt fired out without checking - 28 march 2006
Sorry Bill, but families are leaving this county as i have witnessed and moving to greener pastures, where there are dentists, where the price of fuel is fair,where there are far more facilities on offer where they dont need to travel 110 miles(220miles round trip) for basic medical care that should be available to everyone localy.The council will have to realise that the reason that people arent paying their council tax is because they cant keep up with the constant strain that the council is putting on their income.
as for cutting services ...well why not just close Caithness down all together, if it costs more to run than we can afford we must be doing something wrong somewhere!
Pensions and council tax: http://www.ipe.com/article_default.asp?article=20521
Hi Ju the link is not working.:D
its working now.....I had a smiley somehow attached to the url....ppppfffffff
Yes _ju_ a very informitive link, perhaps all councillors should read this and try to figure out how to lower the council tax burden on us rather than focusing all their efforts on harrassing us for what we simply cant afford. Income tax, council tax,vat, fuel tax, road tax...tax tax tax..we need to make a living somewhere along the line, if we are working just to be able to meet all the tax demands ..well there is little insentive to work at all !
You just have to watch the TV programme " Bailiffs " to see how unjust the council tax is, they enter peoples houses who clearly cant afford their demands and start making a list of their belongings with the view to selling them in order to get what they believe they are owed, if that person does not have any goods of value then they may go to prison!!! What kind of world are we living in? does this not remind you of the medievel movie where the evil King imposes outrages taxes not caring about the needs of the people.. but Robin Hood comes along and saves the day, well we aint got any Robin Hoods.
connieb19
27-Mar-06, 23:43
my council tax bill for this year will be left unpayedGreat!!!! no wonder it goes up so much every year. Those of us who do pay will foot the bill for people like you who don't pay!!![mad]
2little2late
27-Mar-06, 23:50
Great!!!! no wonder it goes up so much every year. Those of us who do pay will foot the bill for people like you who don't pay!!![mad]
My sentiments exactly.
No its because people like you pay whatever they ask without question, thats why they go on demanding more, we have to stand up for ourselves, i have spoken to many old people who are sruggling just to get by on what little they have to keep up with this unfare tax, people in part time jobs are having to give as much as a quarter of their weekly pay towards this tax so where are they going to live when they cant afford to pay their rent? how will they eat if they pay their rent and council tax or how will they heat their homes?
We must remember those who have different circumstances from us...and remember I'm talking about people who are making significant contributions to the community, many hard working people are on low incomes and they are being kept in a constant state of poverty, with little or no chance of having the abillity to keep up with the bills let alone have the chance to save for the future, should these people be bullied to pay more than they can afford, how does this bare on the future economy...think long term...its all very well being a goody two shoes and paying every single bill while chastising those who cant pay, but remember outrages tax demands will affect the way this county will evolve and having povertised families all over the place is not a good starting point!!
Yes _ju_ a very informitive link, perhaps all councillors should read this and try to figure out how to lower the council tax burden on us rather than focusing all their efforts on harrassing us for what we simply cant afford. Income tax, council tax,vat, fuel tax, road tax...tax tax tax..we need to make a living somewhere along the line, if we are working just to be able to meet all the tax demands ..well there is little insentive to work at all !
You just have to watch the TV programme " Bailiffs " to see how unjust the council tax is, they enter peoples houses who clearly cant afford their demands and start making a list of their belongings with the view to selling them in order to get what they believe they are owed, if that person does not have any goods of value then they may go to prison!!! What kind of world are we living in? does this not remind you of the medievel movie where the evil King imposes outrages taxes not caring about the needs of the people.. but Robin Hood comes along and saves the day, well we aint got any Robin Hoods.
Then,when you die ( and you will inevitably do so) what had so far escaped tax gets heavily taxed again.
Great!!!! no wonder it goes up so much every year. Those of us who do pay will foot the bill for people like you who don't pay!!![mad]
No reply yet connie, or are you still trying tofigure out what economy means?
connieb19
28-Mar-06, 00:42
No reply yet connie, or are you still trying tofigure out what economy means?No, actually I was too busy reading the rubbish you were talking on the Dounreay thread. [lol] [lol] [lol] Sorry matey, I don't agree with you there either!![para]
No, actually I was too busy reading the rubbish you were talking on the Dounreay thread. [lol] [lol] [lol] Sorry matey, I don't agree with you there either!![para]
You probably work in Dounreay, and I have a sneaky suspicion that you dont realy care about the enviroment or those who are less fortunate than yourself..mmm..very "I'm alright jack " attatude, just what we need less of in this world...dont you care about others?
connieb19
28-Mar-06, 00:56
You probably work in Dounreay, and I have a sneaky suspicion that you dont realy care about the enviroment or those who are less fortunate than yourself..mmm..very "I'm alright jack " attatude, just what we need less of in this world...dont you care about others?What planet are you on? How dare you say I don't care about others, you know nothing about me!!!![mad] [mad] [mad] Maybe we should have a world full of people like you, all refusing to pay their taxes. What a sorry state the place would be in then!!!!! And you say I don't care!!!!
What planet are you on? How dare you say I don't care about others, you know nothing about me!!!![mad] [mad] [mad] Maybe we should have a world full of people like you, all refusing to pay their taxes. What a sorry state the place would be in then!!!!! And you say I don't care!!!!
dont plow a fuse connie no harm intended, i'm merely saying that we must all consider the whole picture before we start complying with every little thing asked of us , for exampal who gets the benefits of the money we are being forced to pay, how does these taxes effect the majority of us and what the effects they have on those who are on low incomes, how many people will be forced into poverty and how this can be avoided.
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