Council Tax will rise – but councillors believe it is still good value for services provided in Chatteris

Chatteris residents will be paying more for the services run by the town council in the coming year due to rising costs.

At Tuesday night’s council meeting, councillors reluctantly agreed they had no choice but to increase its share of the Council Tax despite hopes it could stay the same for 2024/25.

Cllr Ian Benney, who chaired the meeting in the absence of mayor Anne Hay, told members that increased costs including the rise in employer’s National Insurance contributions meant it was harder to balance the books without putting the precept up from April.

He said that the additional NI contributions would cost the town council, which has just two employees, £6,000 – he pointed out that Fenland District Council was facing a bill of an extra £280,000.

Another extra cost was the unforeseen by-election due to be held next month to replace Cllr Ken Perrin who resigned from the council last month.

Cllr Peter Murphy totally agreed the council had no choice but to raise the precept this year and said not doing so would just make a bad situation worse, and said the rising costs were only going to get “worse and worse”.

Cllr Alan Gowler said putting the Council Tax up went against his principles, but he could see there was no alternative as the council’s finance officer, Angela Papworth, said they could not spend any more of its reserves.

At last month’s meeting councillors heard from Mrs Papworth that the precept would need to rise to cover extra costs around the Christmas lights as new electrical installations were needed.

Mrs Papworth said the recommendation was to increase the precept by £16,000 putting it up to a total of £189,500 for 2024/25. The rise would cost the average Band D householder an extra £3.61 for the year meaning residents would pay £53.88 over the 12 months for town council services.

Cllr Murphy pointed out that meant people would be paying around £1 a week for everything the town council does, which includes the Christmas lights and the summer festival.

Cllr Sue Unwin said: “When you look at it, it is good value.”

Mrs Papworth concluded: “When we first drew up the budget people would have been paying an extra £4.01, but because the tax base has gone up (more houses have been built) the rise was now 40p less.”

Councillors unanimously agreed to the precept increase.