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2 February 2025
So, what’s been happening at Hughenden Parish Council in the last couple of weeks?
I’ve been on holiday so couldn’t attend the Council meeting on 21 January. I couldn’t have attended anyway because I believe the meeting was convened unlawfully (see my blogs of 1 and 14 December 2024 and 9 January 2025).
And, to be honest, most of the agenda looked pretty pointless. What on earth, for example, was Council meant to do with 13 pages of the Internal Audit Guidance for 2024/5? Or 13 pages of the New Councillors’ Induction Pack?
However, I thought you might want to know how much tax you will be paying HPC next year.
The Financial Responsible Office of the Council is required to present a budget to the Council by January at the latest for the next financial year, Council is asked to approve it, and Council is then required to set the precept. The precept is how much the Council decides it wants from you, the taxpayer.
It is up to parish councils to set whatever precept they decide. There are no constraints on what they set and they are accountable to no-one - except the taxpayer every four years at the local elections. Bucks Council merely collects the money from the taxpayer and transfers it to the parish councils.
Well, the agenda didn’t have a resolution for a specific amount for the precept; it merely referred to Appendix E. Appendix E (prepared by who knows who?) merely provides a set of tables with no explanation or narrative.
However, if you look hard, right at the end of Appendix E, there is a sentence saying “the minimum required precept is £294k”. This is £75k more than the precept for 2024/5 i.e. an increase of 34%.
We will have to wait for the draft minutes to find out if Council approved a precept of £294k – or maybe find out when our Council Tax Bill arrives in March.
Of course, the Council could put an explanation on its website explaining why the precept is set to go up 34% (if it is). It could do this in simple terms that the average taxpayer could understand. But nothing there – as yet.
I’m struggling to understand this increase so I could do with an explanation too.
But I’ve had a go.
Next year, the Council’s proposed budget is as follows: -
Costs Income
Allotments £19k £10k
Burial grounds £40k £25k
Services devolved from BC £33k £15k
Open spaces £85k
Playgrounds £16k
Road Safety £13k
Streetlighting £7k
Total direct costs £213
Accounting services £11k
Software for burial grounds £8k
Grants £10k
Staff £146k
Other governance/admin £40k
Interest £3k
Total governance/admin/HR £215k
Total £428 £53
So, the Council needs £375k to plug the gap i.e. £428-53k
In addition, the Council has budgeted to retain £291k in its reserves.
£188k of this is for a general reserve for emergencies and contingencies. £103k is for specific items such as £30k for road safety investments, £20k for playground contingency, £15k for tree work and £10k each for streetlighting and burial ground development.
So, the Council needs a total of £666k i.e. £375k + 291k for 2025/6.
The Council expects to have £372k left in the bank at the end of 2024/5.
So, Council needs £294k to come from your taxes.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t explain why the precept is set to go up by 34%.
It is puzzling because the Council is budgeting to spend less in 2025/6 than it did in 2024/5 (with about the same income).
But I thought – perhaps it is going to overspend this year against its budget and needs to recoup its losses? Well, no – Council only expects to overspend by £10k this year. (An overspend of £53k on overheads, particularly staffing, off-set by an underspend on direct costs and £34k more income than budgeted).
So, if it plans to spend less and is going to roughly come in on this year’s budget, why does Council need the precept to go up by £75k and 34%?
Beats me.
The only reason I can think of is that this year’s budget wasn’t realistic.
In fact, Council never approved a budget for 2024/5 - it had a spreadsheet prepared hurriedly by a number of councillors and introduced by the Chair, Cllr Jones.
Perhaps that budget underestimated the impact on the reserves of spending so much money this year in 2024/5 i.e. a massive £572k, including £132k on two new playgrounds?
Speaking of playgrounds, the Council was asked at the January Council meeting to approve a contract for £90k with a company called HAGS Ltd for a new Great Kingshill playground.
This was on the basis of a report (prepared by who knows who?) with minimal information and an incomprehensible diagram of the proposed playground.
The report contained a recommendation to approve the contract with HAGS Ltd from a working group which had evaluated the tender submissions. Council had not appointed the members of this working group and has not been informed who is on it. Nor has Council authorised the working group to carry out the evaluation.
Just par for the course again.
If you are interested, you can look at what was provided to Council at Appendix J in the supporting papers online.
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