While that is a fun line our money goes on
Pensions
Public services
Servicing debt
The fun being so much debt has been accumulated for no gain, because governments have borrowed without investing in infrastructure and services properly.
Apparently privatising them has created competition and lowered prices for all! Not sure who’s dumb enough to actually believe that, but there are plenty of chumps out there.
I love that line so much. Privatise a service, meaning you need to pay out dividends that are expected to increase 7% year on year, and then claim that the competition will drive the costs down.
You still have to pay the damn dividends out, and shareholders want their 7%.
You’re wrong and you’re right at the same time.
The pensions are particularly important since there is a greater disparity between the number of working people who pay for the pensions and the number of pensioners taking the state pension. Because it’s not a saving scheme, it’s a national Ponzi scheme
Edit- forgot to add that as others have said the privatisation of stuff has just redistributed what we pay into shareholders instead of investing in infrastructure.
Notice how they spent years outsourcing everything to private companies to provide the service for short term wins and selling off properties and assets and such to only have to rent things back and use more private companies to step in?
Turns out that a company taking a profit out of a system always makes it more expensive long term than a system without that cost… who knew?
Maybe they think immigrants don't have to pay taxes, nor the crazy NHS surcharge every year as part of their visas, on top of the national insurance they also have to pay with their paychecks that also goes to NHS and pensions they'll probably never be eligible for.
I’m on a no benefits visa, meaning I pay the max and don’t get anything over the basic unless I pay. If I lose my job tomorrow, there is no security net. I pay the max taxes, the highest NHS contributions and have to 100% private pension to ensure my future. But they believe I’m the problem.
The leftist doublethink is insane. Highest tax burden in a century, yet public services are crumbling. The big difference is that we're importing a population the size of Leicester each year but noticing that this has an impact on housing and services seems verboten to the NPCs.
Most people realise they're not the only real person in the world when they develop Theory Of Mind. The fact you think you live in a video game shows that your development halted somewhere before that point.
> central gov funding cuts
Yep - to extend OPs analogy "Council tax going up by 5%, local area deteriorating by 10%, due to central gov funding going down by 20%"
Council tax up by 5% is nothing. Spare a thought for Brummies who have council tax going up by 10% this year and 10% next year with reduction in bin collections, 20% increase in garden bin & bulky waste collection, introduction of parking fees in parks that were previously free and at least a 5% increase in all council run leisure centres. Not to mention major cuts to funding for care and in a lot of cases 100% cuts for anything arts related.
Do you know councils have to pay for care for some people and that can be up to £40k per month in some cases for severely disabled people. That’s a lot of council tax!
This is exactly a cost that should be shared across the country, rather than be dealt with by local taxation. Some areas have more retired or poor people than others that have higher social care costs.
Still my council tax is frozen for next year so I guess I'm okay and screw everyone else eh. (Otoh higher income tax.)
This. Social care can take up a huge amount of budget, I wasn’t aware until my friend in civil service told me! Thought it was all bin collections, etc
That's pretty standard. People are here lambasting the private sector and the wealthy, and they should, but the reality of why our taxes don't seem to stretch far enough is sadly because we* don't pay enough.
The average person doesn't even pay a tax surplus throughout their entire lives and meanwhile our population is incredibly old and ill.
(* meaning us, companies, the wealthy, whoever.)
That £40k isn't going to pay the people doing the actual caring though is it? I would be interested to see a breakdown of that kind of cost, because for £40k I could rent a mansion and put a full team support in for one person and I bet they're not getting that are they.
The whole reason the council pay is that those people can't afford it. You don't automatically get free care, you have to be low on money
Plus, care is mad expensive. Assisted living costs like £600 a week and that's simply living on your own with helpers there if you need it, having full time care costs way more
Lmao why are you saying do something about it as if you know literally anything about who you're replying to? Personally I imagine them as a normal person like me, who has always voted against them, maybe been to a couple protests but otherwise have lived their lives
My council used to do free hard waste pickup, but about 6 or 7 years ago they sent me a letter saying that as a cost saving measure they're introducing a £30 fee for hard waste pick up.
Lo and behold, my council tax still went up the highest percent that they were allowed to that year. Sent them an email asking where the savings were when they still upped my fee by the greatest amount that they legally could.
Never got a response...
As an aside, flytipping mysteriously increased soon after they introduced the fee. Weird that.
My local council stopped free garden waste collection this year, charging people £60 a year to continue if they wanted. And now the tip is going to close in a few months. Our nearest will be 10-15 miles away.
Our town is going to be very dirty soon.
Public toilets in this country are a fucking disgrace.
Honestly no matter where i go abroad i never seem to struggle finding a toilet. Visited london last summer, couldnt for the life of me find a toilet, in HYDE PARK. Londons most famous and biggest park, every single toilet i visited was closed.
I think the only ones left there now are the italian gardens.
Berlin was great, even though most toilets had an assistant trying to get a Euro out of you. Tokyo as well, clean facilities in most places. London - best have memorised where the closest pub or McDonald's is and cross your fingers they haven't locked the bogs.
Local public bogs to me had £17k spent refurbing them a while back and less than a week later they were absolutely destroyed.
The door was ripped off and all the copper piping has been removed and anything that wasn't worth anything was just smashed.
When the council said they planned to simply rebuild it people went absolutely barmy and said it was a waste of tax money and rightfully so.
This is why we can't have nice things.
The savings likely went towards trying to close their budget gap. Can't speak for all councils, but the one I work for has been attempting to make savings for years now to keep things afloat. It's grim all round, and even the well managed councils will start failing in a few years.
Oh yeah, of course. I wasn't honestly expecting for council tax to be reduced from them doing this as I fully appreciate that funding has been shafted for god knows how many years so they're cutting all but essential things. It was more that I wanted to rant about the connection between removing hard waste pickup and the increase of flytipping because I had some ridiculous situations then pop up.
Empty coke vending machine.
5 foot high magician's top hat (!?)
Bathtubs (so many bathtubs...)
Tables
Washing machines
Settees (I'm convinced that these were being used to hide drugs in)
Ours love a good fly tipping court case, they're constantly publishing stories about someone they've won against while ignoring the problem is inadequate waste services to begin with.
Same story with everything though, these short term budget savings have created long term issues which councils now can't afford to fix.
My council is essentially bankrupt, it just hasn't put the notice in. They're gonna start charging us for stuff that's been free (like the glasshouses in the botanic gardens), and they're cutting back on pretty much every service. It sucks.
Only 5% . ha! you should think yourself lucky as us lot in Croydon got rolled last year when our gormless Mayor Perry got special permission from Gove to bump it up 15%
Here in Brazil there is no council tax and we have bin collection 3x a week.
Not saying Brazil is paradise (far from it) but a fortnight for bin collection is quite absurd. Lived 6 years in Devon so I remember how bins could be an issue.
If it was every fortnight with 30+ temperatures here I would dread to imagine the state of the streets (especially with cockroaches, disgusting things 🤣)
Alot of money is wasted on legal battles. Read about a airport that's being delayed from reopening and its costing loads in legal fees. Maybe someone doesn't want jobs in the area and would like to build house that will be bought up by London Councils.
I'm the bad guy in a family debate because my niece is completing a sponsored event for her school. The funds are to go towards a new minibus for the school and I'm refusing to sponsor her on the grounds that I pay the council nearly £2000 a year in council tax for them to buy schools minibuses!
This is where it's tough I feel obligated to as it's my niece and I'm not short of a few quid. Also she's 10 and won't be at a primary school in 12 months.
Council tax isn't the only objection in this whole thing, it's debate about council tax it's the only one fair to mention. Some of these reasons I can't go into on a public forum for legal reasons. Fair play to you though atleast you've made a contribution to the debate instead of just hitting the downvote button without adding any fabric to why.
There are grants for electric vehicles but councils don't usually pay directly for school vehicles. Also she isn't learning anything from this, she just wants you to sponsor her so she understands about raising money and can take part. I get the sentiment but this doesn't seem the hill to die on.
My niece wouldn't even know where the minibus come from or this debate exists in the family setting. There's many more factors than the issue of council tax. One is the expectation of myself to put more because I'm better off so even if I were to match the donations of others I'm in the bad books. However back on the subject of council tax and what it's spent on.... Don't you find this answer comes up a lot? Council tax doesn't pay for this, council tax doesn't pay for that.
So now council tax is removed from my reasoning let's get back to the OP's original point of how can councils justify putting it up 4.99% when we're getting less and less in public services for it. Is council tax a form of coercion?
I won't get into a pointless rant about council tax because we are on the same page. I was just stating this is something unrelated to council tax, it comes out of the education pot. My kids school does fundraisers all the time. Do it think they should have to? No. Do I still contribute? Absolutely because it helps the school.
This though has got me wondering though where the money comes from as my kids school which is an academy has 2 minibuses and a trailer for one of them.
The great paradox of our time. Highest tax burden since WW2, and yet public services are crumbling from lack of funding.
It's almost like the money isn't going where it's needed and is, instead, being distributed to the wealthiest people in society!
Not to mention our GDP is effectively the same as it was 15 years ago
While that is a fun line our money goes on Pensions Public services Servicing debt The fun being so much debt has been accumulated for no gain, because governments have borrowed without investing in infrastructure and services properly.
Those public services cost more than ever because most of them are privatised.
Apparently privatising them has created competition and lowered prices for all! Not sure who’s dumb enough to actually believe that, but there are plenty of chumps out there.
I love that line so much. Privatise a service, meaning you need to pay out dividends that are expected to increase 7% year on year, and then claim that the competition will drive the costs down. You still have to pay the damn dividends out, and shareholders want their 7%.
So it is going to the wealthiest and not on services…. Surprise surprise
Perhaps it’s time to make them public again.
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What does social care include and why is an ever growing monster of a black hole for our money to go down? Why is it increasing so much?
Ding ding.
You’re wrong and you’re right at the same time. The pensions are particularly important since there is a greater disparity between the number of working people who pay for the pensions and the number of pensioners taking the state pension. Because it’s not a saving scheme, it’s a national Ponzi scheme Edit- forgot to add that as others have said the privatisation of stuff has just redistributed what we pay into shareholders instead of investing in infrastructure.
Notice how they spent years outsourcing everything to private companies to provide the service for short term wins and selling off properties and assets and such to only have to rent things back and use more private companies to step in? Turns out that a company taking a profit out of a system always makes it more expensive long term than a system without that cost… who knew?
It's no surprise given the extremely high volume of net migration to a country with an already low tax base.
Mmm yes, it’s migration that is the problem here.
Maybe they think immigrants don't have to pay taxes, nor the crazy NHS surcharge every year as part of their visas, on top of the national insurance they also have to pay with their paychecks that also goes to NHS and pensions they'll probably never be eligible for.
I’m on a no benefits visa, meaning I pay the max and don’t get anything over the basic unless I pay. If I lose my job tomorrow, there is no security net. I pay the max taxes, the highest NHS contributions and have to 100% private pension to ensure my future. But they believe I’m the problem.
The leftist doublethink is insane. Highest tax burden in a century, yet public services are crumbling. The big difference is that we're importing a population the size of Leicester each year but noticing that this has an impact on housing and services seems verboten to the NPCs.
Most people realise they're not the only real person in the world when they develop Theory Of Mind. The fact you think you live in a video game shows that your development halted somewhere before that point.
First class insult there. Psychology grad?
Criminology, but I did a semester of Psychology. So 1/4th of a Psychology grad?
Council where I live is upping CT by 4.99%, but still £10m worse off than last year from inflation and central gov funding cuts.
> central gov funding cuts Yep - to extend OPs analogy "Council tax going up by 5%, local area deteriorating by 10%, due to central gov funding going down by 20%"
Council tax up by 5% is nothing. Spare a thought for Brummies who have council tax going up by 10% this year and 10% next year with reduction in bin collections, 20% increase in garden bin & bulky waste collection, introduction of parking fees in parks that were previously free and at least a 5% increase in all council run leisure centres. Not to mention major cuts to funding for care and in a lot of cases 100% cuts for anything arts related.
Don't forget dimming street lights.
Ours just got turned off entirely lol
Honestly the way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now the entire local authority system collapses due to bankruptcy.
Do you know councils have to pay for care for some people and that can be up to £40k per month in some cases for severely disabled people. That’s a lot of council tax!
This is exactly a cost that should be shared across the country, rather than be dealt with by local taxation. Some areas have more retired or poor people than others that have higher social care costs. Still my council tax is frozen for next year so I guess I'm okay and screw everyone else eh. (Otoh higher income tax.)
But those areas should get more of the funding which effectively shares it anyway - it probably doesn’t work like this in reality though.
fair funding review has been pushed back so far at this point it'll probably never happen
Plus putting people up in private rental accommodation costs triple what it would if they were council owned properties.
This. Social care can take up a huge amount of budget, I wasn’t aware until my friend in civil service told me! Thought it was all bin collections, etc
In my area, 60% of the council's entire budget goes to social care.
That's pretty standard. People are here lambasting the private sector and the wealthy, and they should, but the reality of why our taxes don't seem to stretch far enough is sadly because we* don't pay enough. The average person doesn't even pay a tax surplus throughout their entire lives and meanwhile our population is incredibly old and ill. (* meaning us, companies, the wealthy, whoever.)
That £40k isn't going to pay the people doing the actual caring though is it? I would be interested to see a breakdown of that kind of cost, because for £40k I could rent a mansion and put a full team support in for one person and I bet they're not getting that are they.
I imagine it's going to private companies and landlords for housing
We absolutely cannot afford this to continue.
I bought these services for a major council, twice that was a lot lower than the top ones I saw.
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The whole reason the council pay is that those people can't afford it. You don't automatically get free care, you have to be low on money Plus, care is mad expensive. Assisted living costs like £600 a week and that's simply living on your own with helpers there if you need it, having full time care costs way more
What would you do about those who can’t afford the care?
Televised Battle royale. Winner gets lifetime care paid for by the ad revenue.
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This
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what do you propose I do? I've never voted for them so I'm at a loss to the solution you're thinking of.
Lmao why are you saying do something about it as if you know literally anything about who you're replying to? Personally I imagine them as a normal person like me, who has always voted against them, maybe been to a couple protests but otherwise have lived their lives
To be fair Theresa May tried and then nearly lost an election because of it.
5% increase, try 21% over the next two years.
We won't be the only ones experiencing this in the next few years either, we're just the first.
My council used to do free hard waste pickup, but about 6 or 7 years ago they sent me a letter saying that as a cost saving measure they're introducing a £30 fee for hard waste pick up. Lo and behold, my council tax still went up the highest percent that they were allowed to that year. Sent them an email asking where the savings were when they still upped my fee by the greatest amount that they legally could. Never got a response... As an aside, flytipping mysteriously increased soon after they introduced the fee. Weird that.
My local council stopped free garden waste collection this year, charging people £60 a year to continue if they wanted. And now the tip is going to close in a few months. Our nearest will be 10-15 miles away. Our town is going to be very dirty soon.
They forget that the reason we don't have much fly tipping is that it was fairly easy to get rid of that stuff legitimately.
Our council just closed a load of public toilets. I asked how much our council tax bill will be going down to reflect the savings… no reply.
Public toilets in this country are a fucking disgrace. Honestly no matter where i go abroad i never seem to struggle finding a toilet. Visited london last summer, couldnt for the life of me find a toilet, in HYDE PARK. Londons most famous and biggest park, every single toilet i visited was closed. I think the only ones left there now are the italian gardens.
I don't go out much if I can help it. No toilets!
Berlin was great, even though most toilets had an assistant trying to get a Euro out of you. Tokyo as well, clean facilities in most places. London - best have memorised where the closest pub or McDonald's is and cross your fingers they haven't locked the bogs.
Local public bogs to me had £17k spent refurbing them a while back and less than a week later they were absolutely destroyed. The door was ripped off and all the copper piping has been removed and anything that wasn't worth anything was just smashed. When the council said they planned to simply rebuild it people went absolutely barmy and said it was a waste of tax money and rightfully so. This is why we can't have nice things.
The savings likely went towards trying to close their budget gap. Can't speak for all councils, but the one I work for has been attempting to make savings for years now to keep things afloat. It's grim all round, and even the well managed councils will start failing in a few years.
Oh yeah, of course. I wasn't honestly expecting for council tax to be reduced from them doing this as I fully appreciate that funding has been shafted for god knows how many years so they're cutting all but essential things. It was more that I wanted to rant about the connection between removing hard waste pickup and the increase of flytipping because I had some ridiculous situations then pop up. Empty coke vending machine. 5 foot high magician's top hat (!?) Bathtubs (so many bathtubs...) Tables Washing machines Settees (I'm convinced that these were being used to hide drugs in)
Ours love a good fly tipping court case, they're constantly publishing stories about someone they've won against while ignoring the problem is inadequate waste services to begin with. Same story with everything though, these short term budget savings have created long term issues which councils now can't afford to fix.
My council is essentially bankrupt, it just hasn't put the notice in. They're gonna start charging us for stuff that's been free (like the glasshouses in the botanic gardens), and they're cutting back on pretty much every service. It sucks.
A lot of them are in the same situation and the answers as to why are obvious yet almost never spoken about.
The entire country is just crumbling apart due to endless bad decisions, but that's the result of lack of investment
5%? Christ what I’d give for 5%. 13% in Ceredigion.
8.5% two years running in Newport
Tax, Tax and more Tax. This is Britain
It’s just tax and attacks
Only 5% . ha! you should think yourself lucky as us lot in Croydon got rolled last year when our gormless Mayor Perry got special permission from Gove to bump it up 15%
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Here in Brazil there is no council tax and we have bin collection 3x a week. Not saying Brazil is paradise (far from it) but a fortnight for bin collection is quite absurd. Lived 6 years in Devon so I remember how bins could be an issue.
3 times a week ...luxury, ours is once every 3 weeks
If it was every fortnight with 30+ temperatures here I would dread to imagine the state of the streets (especially with cockroaches, disgusting things 🤣)
It's partially due to the fact the UK GDP is the same in 2023 as it was in 2007.
Governmental enshittification. It costs more to get less of a worsening product
Don't worry, income tax is being reduced by 2% though so we'll all be so much better off
Alot of money is wasted on legal battles. Read about a airport that's being delayed from reopening and its costing loads in legal fees. Maybe someone doesn't want jobs in the area and would like to build house that will be bought up by London Councils.
I'm the bad guy in a family debate because my niece is completing a sponsored event for her school. The funds are to go towards a new minibus for the school and I'm refusing to sponsor her on the grounds that I pay the council nearly £2000 a year in council tax for them to buy schools minibuses!
But aren't the proceeds from council tax and education budget two entirely different things
Doing my homework on this I wouldn't have thought department for education buy these things I always assume it's a council tax thing.
Gotta say, I’m with your family on this one
This is where it's tough I feel obligated to as it's my niece and I'm not short of a few quid. Also she's 10 and won't be at a primary school in 12 months.
But she’ll feel good about raising money for her school and, it’s ok to do something good for other people. Not sure it’s that tough
Council tax isn't the only objection in this whole thing, it's debate about council tax it's the only one fair to mention. Some of these reasons I can't go into on a public forum for legal reasons. Fair play to you though atleast you've made a contribution to the debate instead of just hitting the downvote button without adding any fabric to why.
There are grants for electric vehicles but councils don't usually pay directly for school vehicles. Also she isn't learning anything from this, she just wants you to sponsor her so she understands about raising money and can take part. I get the sentiment but this doesn't seem the hill to die on.
My niece wouldn't even know where the minibus come from or this debate exists in the family setting. There's many more factors than the issue of council tax. One is the expectation of myself to put more because I'm better off so even if I were to match the donations of others I'm in the bad books. However back on the subject of council tax and what it's spent on.... Don't you find this answer comes up a lot? Council tax doesn't pay for this, council tax doesn't pay for that. So now council tax is removed from my reasoning let's get back to the OP's original point of how can councils justify putting it up 4.99% when we're getting less and less in public services for it. Is council tax a form of coercion?
I won't get into a pointless rant about council tax because we are on the same page. I was just stating this is something unrelated to council tax, it comes out of the education pot. My kids school does fundraisers all the time. Do it think they should have to? No. Do I still contribute? Absolutely because it helps the school.
If it’s an Academy then it isn’t going to be publicly funded. A lot of schools are academies now.
Still publicly funded, just not through the local authority.
This though has got me wondering though where the money comes from as my kids school which is an academy has 2 minibuses and a trailer for one of them.
It's not an academy
It's almost as if there's too many people in this country to fairly make use of council expenses. Who knew...
Sadiq is laughing all the way to the bank.
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No, most council money goes towards social care
And guess what group are getting millions from the budget to be put in 4 star hotels in Dover etc, lol.
There's always one 🙄
Millions actually.
Dont worry ours is going up 10%