C A R M A R T H E N S H I R E COUNTY COUNCIL’s decision to up its Council Tax by 4.85% was the subject of fierce debate at Friday’s (Mar 6) council meeting.
Jeff Edmunds, who presented the Council Tax increase proposals claimed: “We have set a prudent budget and a prudent council tax. Taking £6m from our reserves, would mean a black hole in next year’s budget which we would have to fill.”
However, Cllr Edmunds claims were attacked by Plaid Cymru’s Alun Lenny, who pointed out that Rhondda Cynon Taff Council had used its reserves, of a similar level to Carmarthenshire’s, to reduce the impact of service cuts and to avoid an ‘inflation-busting’ rise in Council Tax. The Valleys council had used £4.3m of its reserves to balance its budget and, according to Cllr Lenny, it was inexplicable that Carmarthen could not use the same.
Cll Lenny told councillors that Labour’s own Leighton Andrews, the Welsh Public Services Minister, had strongly implied that the Welsh Government felt the reserves of some Welsh councils were too high and that councils should use that money to bankroll services and avoid cuts.
Alun attack was met with a furious response from council leader Kevin Madge, who claimed that Plaid’s proposals in relation to the use of reserves were irresponsible and smacked of last-minute opportunism than any deep thought on the issue.
Mr Madge did not address Cllr Lenny’s accusation that Plaid had asked for the reserve figures during the budget consultation process and had not been provided with them.
Cllr Dai Jenkins for Plaid suggested that Mr Madge’s contribution to the debate had been long on rhetoric but short on actual content. He pointed out that the Labour leader had spent his entire peroration speaking of buildings and roads, without thinking of the services the council was supposed to supply.
Describing himself as ‘a geek’, Cllr Jenkins revealed that he had calculated that per head of population, Carmarthenshire’s reserves were around £661, compared to a figure of £148 per head for Cardiff. Carmarthenshire’s reserves were behind only Rhondda Cynon Taf’s and Swansea’s in size.
Elwyn Hughes for Plaid proposed using £1.2m of the council’s £122m reserves to enable a lower tax of three per cent to be set.
Instead the ruling Labour/ Independent coalition chose to vote for the series of cuts to services, including £18,000 off the grant to Myrddin Special and Autistic Unit, and waved through the 4.85%
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