‘Mayor’s urban parishes threaten potential paupery’

By now, readers may be aware that Bristol City Council has begun a major public consultation on its draft Corporate Strategy for the next five years. This contains various proposals on how the authority intends to close a £92m budget gap in its finances.

This document raises a number of interesting ideas but one in particular has caught my attention, and against which I am firmly opposed, concerning a “conversation about the possibility of people paying more council tax, on the understanding that a portion of this will directly benefit their own local neighbourhood, through for example setting up an Urban Parish”.

Now, I appreciate that one of the advantages of such bodies is that these miniature councils may enable the preservation of a local service or public amenity (which might otherwise be lost due to lack of funding) thanks to their ability to raise additional council tax on residents within their borders and unlike with the city council the tax increases are not capped.

At the moment the council is limited in how much it can put up council tax to two per cent with an additional two per cent rise if this is earmarked for social care. Parish councils face no such cap and can increase their rate by an unlimited amount. Last year alone, more than 60 parishes more than doubled their share of the local council tax bill.

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Whilst this might be superficially appealing to council officials – if only because it maintains their spending power – in my view, the disadvantages of such a measure greatly outweigh the case for such a reform in our city.

Firstly, this revenue-raising tool is effectively a form of double taxation because cash-strapped councils will inevitably devolve responsibility for some services onto a parish (but not the resources to pay for them). This will result in households essentially paying more in council tax only to receive less in return.  

Secondly, I believe that this will actually further inequality on our city. Wealthy areas will be able to levy a fairly small precept and maintain standards, however poorer areas would have to levy some fairly eye popping increases in order to be able to afford the same provision. Alternatively, the council might decide to provide more subsidy for poorer communities and withdraw almost entirely from seemingly well off areas – if so this would again be unfair and merely compound the issue in argument one of double taxation.

Thirdly, as mentioned before, unlike council tax, where any proposed increases are currently capped by government at four per cent (including two per cent social care uplift) before requiring approval by referendum, this restriction does not apply to a parish precept. This is palpably unfair and a potential hostage to fortune for future eye-watering, inflation-busting rises which taxpayers have to pay.

Fourthly, how will these parishes be resourced?  There is already a healthy scepticism about creating further tiers of local government. Another level of bureaucracy, paid for by the taxpayer with the ability to charge us more taxes – sounds delicious!

Fifthly, we have no idea where the boundaries will be. Will they match the neighbourhood partnerships? Will they cut across communities? How many will there be? These are pretty basic questions and yet the consultation has no answers.

In another part of the mayor’s outline consultation document, we are told that the authority is looking to “reshape [its] approach to civic engagement and local empowerment and reform of the Neighbourhood Partnerships”.

Here, there is no doubt that changes to the way councillors interact with communities is overdue. The 14 partnerships have not evolved as hoped or promised and are very costly to run. So, it may well be that some or all of these could be replaced by the mayor’s urban parishes.  However, for all the reasons given above, I do not believe this is an appropriate or acceptable way forward.

Historically, previous consultations on plans to raise extra money from citizens have not gone down well in Bristol – remembering here Labour’s ill-fated referendum on the council tax in 2001.  Voters were asked which of four options they preferred: no rise, two per cent, four per cent or a whopping six per cent rise. More than half of residents voted for a freeze instead of any increase at all.

I suspect once people are made more aware of the implications of introducing such additional political tiers, this latest effort will suffer the same fate and be roundly rejected. Any conversation on paying more tax is likely to be nasty, brutish and short.

Mark Weston is the leader of the Conservative Party group of councillors at City Hall.

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