Council tax bills in Burnham-On-Sea and Highbridge are set to fall slightly from April after proposals for a ‘standstill budget’ were agreed by town councillors on Monday night (February 7th).
Town councillors unanimously voted in favour of a proposal from the council’s Finance and Resources Committee to move forward with a £697,808 budget for the coming financial year.
Councillors voted in favour of a decrease to the council’s total budget, reducing it from last year’s £707,399 last year.
It means that the Band D council tax equivalent will be £108.50, down from £111.81 last year.
Mayor Cllr Mike Facey said earlier this year: “We are listening to the public and know that some are struggling. I support a budget with no extra burden on the taxpayers.”
Cllr Phil Harvey told Monday’s meeting he would have liked to see a greater reduction in the council tax charge “because the council’s balances are at the top end of what we need, but I don’t want to do that this year because we are facing a cost of living crisis.”
He added: “We are looking at a very high rate of inflation over the next year or two years so I think it is best that we keep our balances high as I forsee that we may well be getting requests for help from groups, on behalf of our residents that exceed the amount in our grants budget. We may want to deal with that sympathetically and in order to deal with it, we need to keep those reserves high.”
While the Town Council’s element of the council tax will decrease, the other contributing parts of the overall Council Tax charge – such as Police, district council and county council – have not yet been agreed.
