10 June 2005
Councils threatened with capping might have to wait until the summer to discover their fate.
The Local Government Association this week called for 'an urgent meeting' with new local government minister Phil Woolas to resolve the issue.
Woolas's predecessor, Nick Raynsford, told nine councils they would have their council tax capped.
But the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister said that a decision was expected 'in the next couple of months'.
That leaves the councils in continued uncertainty.
LGA chair Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart said: 'We have made clear our astonishment that nine low-tax, low-spend authorities should be capped in a year when local government has delivered the lowest average council tax rise in a decade.'
He said that if ministers were serious about giving councils more freedoms, they 'should leave the nine councils to make their own decisions about their budgets, based on what local people want'.
Central government requirements on councils to spend more had not been matched by extra grants, leading to the prospect of 'a massive £1.5bn black hole for budgets for 2006', he said.
Raynsford decided to cap councils whose tax had increased by more than 5.5% over the previous year and whose budget had increased by 6% or more. The affected councils, all Conservative controlled, are Aylesbury Vale (9.2% increase), Daventry (30.6%), Hambleton (17.6%), Huntingdonshire (12.7%), Mid Bedfordshire (13.3%), North Dorset (23.3%), Runnymede (17.5%), Sedgemoor (12.3%) and South Cambridgeshire (100%).
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