COUNCILLORS have slated funding public services through council tax rises, despite voting to increase the charge this week.

The county council agreed to a 2.99 per cent rise in council tax on Tuesday to fund its £485m budget for the year starting in April.

But during the meeting, there were concerns that council tax was a flawed way of funding local services and would hit the poorest hardest.

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Mark Gray, the cabinet member for local communities, described putting up the tax each year as a ‘sticking plaster’ to patch up the council’s finances year after year.

He said: “Whilst I support this budget I do think that we in the future should be questioning whether council tax and the way it is dealt with is the way to deal with public finances at a local level.”

Labour councillor Laura Price said: “Fundamentally the problem is it relieves the responsibility from central government to sort out local government funding.

“We have to do so much by piecing together a patchwork of grants that go up and down all the time and twist our responsibilities to respond to that.”

She added that turning to people had found themselves in a ‘dire state’ during Covid as a result of being placed on furlough or losing their jobs, and asking them to pay a huge tax hike would be unacceptable.

Lib Dem councillor Janne Hanna said the council had been waiting for a social care settlement from Government for years, which would help it to properly fund care services.

Nick Carter, Conservative councillor, said: “I fully endorse the view that successive governments of all colours have just ignored the opportunity and the need to improve council tax, just as they have abdicated the need to fund social care.”

Despite the reservations, the council voted in favour of increasing the charge.

But they are far from the first to have raised concerns about the long term future of the council tax.

In 2019, before the pandemic, a left-leaning think tank called the Institute for Public Policy Research wrote a report calling for council tax reform.

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It said: “The council tax system takes too little account of ability to pay and is therefore unfair.

“Many of those on the lowest incomes are no longer protected and will be hit ever harder by council tax increases.

“Council tax is becoming ever more important as a source of local government revenue, but its sustainability is undermined by its lack of fairness and its inefficiencies.

“Increases in council tax are likely to become more necessary and frequent as a consequence of the wider context of local government finance.

“The case for reforming council tax is, in our view, overwhelming.”

And the right-wing pressure group the Taxpayers Alliance has made a similar case, arguing that the tax hits the poorest hardest and that councils should focus on getting rid of ‘waste’ instead of charging more.

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