Rother tax freezeis now confirmed

A proposal by the authority’s cabinet to keep its precept at £161.19 a year for a Band D property, was approved at a meeting of the full council on Monday February 25.

The decision means, on average, residents will see their overall council tax bill rise by 1.7 per cent as other authorities agreed an increase in their precept.

Council leader Carl Maynard said: “Setting council tax precepts is always a difficult decision.

“We have to balance the need to protect services with the need to protect residents from increases.

“We believe the budget we have agreed will enable us to protect the frontline services and not burden families struggling to make ends meet by increasing our share of the council tax.”

An alternative proposal was put forward at Tuesday’s meeting that would have seen Rother’s share of Council Tax rise by 1.95 per cent, but councillors decided to back the cabinet’s plan.

Rother District Council’s 2014/15 budget has been set at £11.98million, with reserves to be used to lessen the impact of cuts on frontline services.

Savings will have to be made to balance the books at Rother as the authority expects Government funding to have dropped by around £2.8million between 2010/11 and 20/15/16.

A total of £1million worth of savings will need to be found to meet the projected shortfall in 2015/16 and a review is set to be launched to find ways to achieve this.