Council Tax frozen in Copeland

The Council tax was set in Copeland this evening with zero increases from Cumbria County Council, the police authority, and Copeland Council.

Recognising that many people on low or fixed incomes, such as pensioners, have been badly hurt by council tax rises over the last few years, ther coalition government has honoured the promise in the Conservative manifesto to work with local authorities to make a council tax freeze possible. In Copeland's case the government has provided £400,000 over the next four years to enable the council to freeze the Copeland element of the council tax and avoid the situation where it had to have a double increase next year.

One or two parish councils have imposed small increases.

(For example, Waberthwaite parish had to ask householders in their area for an extra £600 in total over the entire parish, which works out at about four quid over the year for a band A household, to pay for the forthcoming parish council elections.)

The main disagreement at the budget meeting was that the Conservative group wanted to make the first hour free in Copeland's car parks. We would have funded this by cutting councillor's allowances and by a reduction in the training budget.

This amendment was lost by four votes after all the Conservative and Independent councillors voted for it, and all the Labour councillors voted against.

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