The Parish Council is aware that Council Tax bills will be increasing from April 2024 and we have recieved a number of questions regarding the Parish Council portion of this – called the Precept. This article is in response to those queries and questions raised.
At a Parish Council meeting on Monday 8th January, Meppershall Parish Council agreed to request a precept of £78,548 for the financial year 2024-25 to be raised through council tax payments from all the dwellings within the parish area to help support parish council services and activities. This is the total amount of money we will recieve from Central Bedfordshire Council for the 2024-25 financial year.
The precept will be used to cover the costs of annual projects, grants to support village organisations and general running costs including things like staff salaries, administration, insurance, grass cutting, utilities, environmental maintenance of areas including Old Road Meadow, Centenary Field, the Allotments and The Glebe etc.
As always Councillors looked carefully at what is needed in order to keep any increase to a minimum, and to ensure that reserves are sufficient to cover future projects and any unforeseen expenses as well as the agreed level of running costs. We continue to make use of grant applications and funds secured from developers to support our expenditure. We believe we have at Meppershall PC a robust budgeting process and when reviewing the budget this year it was clear that costs in all areas have increased and will perhaps continue to do so for the first part of 2024. Traditionally we have kept increases in precept requests for a Band D dwelling to a minimum between 0% and 2% over the last 5 years but it was evident that we could not so this for the forthcoming financial year. A copy of the approved budget summary is available on our website for anyone interested.
In 2024-25 the annual precept contribution per Band D dwelling will be £73.00 per annum (in 2023-24 it was £64.43). This equates to an increase of £8.57 per annum (86p per month payable) using a Band D Council Tax dwelling. For the 2024-25 year a Band D Council Tax bill will be £2203, up by £108.12 on last year. Only £8.57 of the increase will come to Meppershall the remaining £99.55 will go to predominantly CBC and then the Police and Fire Services. This is why it is often misleading to look at percentage increases on Council Tax Bills as they do not always give an accurate story.
In terms of comparison against 2023-24 averages:
- Average precept request per Band D for parishes in CBC area was £139.20
- Average precept request per Band D for parishes in England was £78.79.
This highlights that Meppershall Parish Council is below both local and national averages in terms of precept requests per Band D dwellings.
The Parish Council welcomes participation at all its meetings where a slot is set aside at the beginning of the meeting to hear questions and representations from the public. Meeting dates, agendas and minutes are availble on our website. We also publish our minutes once approved in the Messenger.
Alessandra – Clerk to the Parish Council – 25th March 2024