Icklesham Parish Council to increase tax by 21%

Icklesham Parish Council has voted for an increase of 20.6% in next year's "precept", which is the tax levied by the parish council and included in the Council Tax bill collected by Rother. Only Winchelsea councillors voted against.
The tax hike means that the last two terms of Icklesham Parish Council will have seen the tax on residents quadruple from £19,000 to almost £95,000. And this sum excludes a borrowing by the council of £40,000. It comes despite a call from government for parishes not to raise taxes this year in view of the continuing deterioration in the financial circumstances of an increasing number of tax-payers.
The tax hike comes despite the fact that Icklesham Parish Council has never managed to spend what it has taken from residents. The current council has managed to spend an average of just 71% of its budgeted expenditures and a mere 65% of its annual income. To put this another way, the parish council tax has been at least one-third higher than it needed to be. When this one pointed out to the council, one councillor objected to our use of percentages and demanded that we talk "cash". Very well! From the last financial year, Icklesham Parish Council carried over £42,000 of unspent funds. The year before, they brought forward over £55,000. The year before that, almost £40,000.
And these numbers disguise the true situation because of the switching of sums during the year from projects included in the original budgets to new projects not envisaged when the budgets were drafted (in other words, residents are often told they are being taxed for one thing, but the money is then spent on another).
We were assured that, this year, there would be no underspend. We were told the same thing last year. And Icklesham Parish Council's forecasting has never been good. The carry-overs from the three last financial years of £42,000+, £55,000+ and £40,000 compare with forecasts of £21,000, £36,000 and £15,000, respectively. We can be sure that every effort will now be made to spend as much money as possible this year in order to avoid another underspend, but the pressure to do this is a cause for concern. Among other weaknesses, Icklesham Parish Council has a predilection for spending money on itself. We have just agreed to spend £125 on a memorial plaque for a deceased former councillor, having previously spend tax-payers' money on flowers and a gift. We have also bought flowers for councillors who are unwell, presents for retiring councillors and clerk, and even lunch for a guide and his wife who took a group of councillors on a private tour. Yet, we have been advised that best practice for such personal gestures is for councillors to dip into their own pockets (which would also show genuine sentiment).
One argument in favour of next year's tax hike was that the sums involved were small when considered in terms of the bill for each household. The precept averages about £65 a year. In isolation, many people may consider such a sum to be small. But every penny of money taken from taxpayers should be necessary and should never sit idle in the bank accounts of councils. Such sums must also be considered in the context of other tax bills facing residents, the increasing cost of living and the shrinking real value of wages and pensions. For many, £65 may be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Other arguments to justify the tax hike included the extra cost of elections next year. In fact, this adds just £6,000 to the bill. The real drivers of the tax hike are unnecessary changes such as the increase in the contingency fund to £10,000. This decision ignores the hard evidence: pattern of past expenditures show that overspending on some projects has been small and swamped by underspending on other projects. A more realistic figure for contingency fund would be about £4,000.
Then, we were told that the Sussex Association of Local Councils has been urging parishes to increase their budgets to make up for the cuts in the budgets of District and County Councils. Unfortunately, none of the planned expenditures by Icklesham Parish Council address any of the areas of reduced expenditure by other councils.
Finally, we were urged to consider the benefits of parish council spending to the lives of residents. However, despite the increase in tax, most wards will see no new projects. All new proposals for Winchelsea were rejected. We are left with projects that should have been completed in previous years.
The situation at Icklesham Parish Council is unlikely to be improved by the sudden resignation of our new clerk after just six months in post. The clerk's departure seems a real pity. In just six months, she managed to clear a huge amount of the backlog of projects and to sort out internal systems. However, at the last council meeting, the chairman refused to allow discussion of the clerk's reasons for resignation, even though the meeting was in confidential session. We have real concerns that the council, which is the clerk's employer and liable for mistakes under employment law, is not being told why the clerk's departure, which followed a meeting with the chairman and vice chairman, was so sudden and unexpected.
Cllrs Chishick, Comotto, Terry