Tax and Services

On 19 Feb we set a council tax rate of 4,7% for Tandridge or an increase of 16p a week for an average taxpayer. This gives a Band D Council Tax level of £188.93. However once the increases by Surrey County Council and Surrey Police were taken into account it resulted in an overall Band D Council Tax level of £1,475.21 for the district, an increase of just 3.4%. When you consider that this is despite an increase in government grant of just 0.5% (from an already very low base) and when the negative housing subsidy (or more accurately central government's tax on council house tenants) is taken into account Tandridge actually subsidises Whitehall rather than the other way around; that our income from fees and investments is likely to fall significantly that we are not cutting services nor sacking employees (and thus helping keep the local economy afloat while protecting the most vulnerable who disproportionately make use of our services); in fact we have even managed to enhance them by extending our popular weekly recycling service to the whole area, introducing a new garden waste service and keeping a free car parking for shoppers to encourage our shop locally initiative and support local businesses during the current economic downturn then I hope local residents will agree that this settlement is the right one. What's more, next year is likely to be even more of a challenge and I believe that the budget agreed will put us in the best place possible to meet those challenges too.

Holidays and Snow

I have been on holiday - hence why zero posts in February up until now.

The night before I left, I spent most of the night stranded on the A22 Caterham Bypass, due to the heavy snowfalls. I as therefrom around 8.30pm to nearly 3am the folowing morning. The lack of gritting and roadclearing of what is a major road inthe County really puts us to shame. I know that this was a once in 20 year event and the severity caught us all unawares (especially me), but even so sonw was forecast and the time it took to get back up and running normally was unacceptable.