Association of Local Councils defends Bromsgrove's parishes

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THE ORGANISATION which represents the district's parish councils has hit back at the claims made last week that the authorities were not value for money.

Richard Levett, the executive officer of the Worcestershire County Association of Local Councils, said he believed parish councils represented excellent value for money.

"Yes, you pay more in a parish council – a band D household in Clent pays a whopping £1.23 per week more, and much less in all the other parishes – but you get more for the money.

"As parish councils are small, they have tiny overheads so they can provide services cheaply.

"In parish councils, administration is what gets the work done.

"In district councils, it’s what services the organisation.

"And, unlike district councils, parish councils do not pay their councillors to turn up to meetings.

"Every penny that a parish council collects from its community is spent in that community."

And he issued a rallying call to everyone who lived in a parished area to have their say on their local council.

"The Government sees parish councils as an important element in delivering its localism agenda – they are, after all, the most local of local authorities.

"Bromsgrove parishes work well with the district council, and really value the co-operation they get.

"It would be a great shame if that were lost."

On the subject of the £42,000, he said Central Government was due to give the district council a subsidy next year because of council tax changes.

He added it identified £52,000 of that should be passed on to parish councils so they would be able to collect almost the same amount through council tax as last year, without increasing council tax.

He claimed Bromsgrove District Council decided to pass on £42,000 of that, but did not tell parish councils about that adequately, or in time, so in most cases, the subsidy was ignored in calculating the council tax the district council is to collect on behalf of parish councils.

Bromsgrove District Council’s executive director of finance and corporate resources, Jayne Pickering, said: “The government left it late to let councils know what funding they were getting this year, including the one-off grant related to supporting parish precepts following changes to council tax discounts.

“Once we had approval from councillors as to the effect of these changes, we informed the parishes of the grant allocations and the tax base to enable them to calculate their precepts.

"However the precepts submitted by the parishes did not all take into account this grant.

"As I told the meeting last week, we accept that we could have been clearer on how parish councils should have dealt with the effect of the grant on their precept-setting.”

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