Torbay tax rise approved

Leaders want to stick more cash in reserves

Councillors in Torbay rejected a call to cut an increase in next year’s council tax.

The Conservative group on Torbay Council asked for the core tax to be frozen because of the financial hardship caused by the pandemic.

Tory leader Dave Thomas said he had worked out that the council had £13 million “sloshing around” in its bank accounts.

But the majority partnership of Liberal Democrats and Independents voted down the objection and approved a 1.99 per cent in the core tax and 3 per cent to go on adult social care.

Cllr Thomas said the spare money included a £7 million underspend on this year’s budget and a £1.8 million windfall from council tax payments.

 He said the council had a £2.5 million surplus from central government funding for covid-19 and claimed the council’s Liberal Democrat leader Steve Darling had told a meeting that it had money “sloshing around”.

The Conservative leader said at the meeting on Thursday night: “Businesses have closed and jobs have been lost. This is not the time to increase our council tax.”

Cllr Darling responded later that his comment referred to the government’s covid support funding, which was ring-fenced, but would be used for the health and wellbeing of the community during recovery from the pandemic.

The Liberal Democrat council leader said next year’s budget would see the council’s reserves increased to a “financially prudent” level and investments to support the community, including a £1.6 million fund to respond to covid-19, £300,000 for a hardship fund for the hardest hit, and £1million for housing and homelessness. 

He said the £7.1 million underspend was largely due to the success of work to control increased costs pressures in children’s services, which the meeting heard had doubled over 10 years to £46 million this year.

The council’s deputy leader Darren Cowell said the council had lost half a billion pounds in government funding due to cuts during the 10 years of austerity. The Independent councillor said the partnership was seeking to restore the investment in services “savagely cut” by the Conservatives in previous years. 

He warned that the council’s financial future was uncertain because the government had only given local authorities a single-year settlement. The budget included restoring bus subsidies, lights for Paignton seafront, sport, economic regeneration including a freeze on car parking fees, and investments in events and town centres. Cllr Cowell said: “We are preparing for the future as well as investing for today.”

Conservative Andrew Barrand, backing the call for a freeze on the core tax, said many people were struggling to pay their council tax this year, and some were being put under pressure from recovery action for non-payment. 

He said: “How can you look people in the eye when they are in a financial hole, and say we are going to dig it deeper by putting your council tax up. It’s wrong.”

Liberal Democrat Jermaine Atiya-Alla said the Conservatives had “wrecked the bay” with cuts in previous years that had put people’s lives in danger. He accused the opposition of hypocrisy and said they had “decimated” people’s lives.

Independent cabinet member Mike Morey said a freeze on council tax by previous Conservative administrations had “devastated” the council’s finances and services that people relied on had been cut. 

Conservative councillors highlighted a series of repairs to they had asked for but said they had been told could not be done because of lack of money. Conservative James O’Dwyer gave a list of fading double yellow lines, paths not passable, roads with potholes, fencing damaged, and play equipment not usable. He said the response was a moratorium on spending because “we have no money, when this was not actually the truth”.

The council also approved a £301 million five-year capital investment programme, with £125 million due to be spent next year, including investments at a series of schools, affordable housing projects, and the regeneration of the Crossways shopping centre in Paignton.