Kintbury sees third sucessive tax rise

It says it has been forced to ask for the rise to combat a likely reduction in funding from West Berkshire Council combined with having to pick up the cost of services it wasn’t previously obliged to pay for.
The current precept – set at £45,000 will rise to £50,000 and will add around £5 to the average council tax bill.
Under West Berkshire Coun-cil’s plans to almost halve its public conveniences budget, Kintbury will be forced to shell out £12,600 – more than 25 per cent of its current precept – in order to maintain its public toilets.
It has since agreed to look at paying half of that figure, £6,300, to keep them open for a six- month period, between October 1 to March 31, 2015, before consulting residents to establish what action they should take.
Another factor behind the decision to raise the precept is that Kintbury is set to miss out on the grant of almost £2,500 it received last year from the district council to assist with council tax support.
During a meeting of Kintbury Parish Council last week, clerk Chris Trigwell said: “There are around 1,000 properties in the village and it is a rise of £5,000, so in real terms we are talking about an increase of £5 a year for the average property.”
The better news for the village is that it has received an email from the Canal and River Trust, a charity that looks after 2,000 miles of waterways in England and Wales, saying that it would be willing to pay the annual cost of emptying the public toilets’ septic tank, estimated at £2,500.
The parish council is now planning to meet members of the trust and West Berkshire Council and consider its options.