• Council is in turmoil as councillors grapple with how much to increase Council Tax
• Cabinet Member for Finance says Council Tax claims made in an email wrong

A CLAIM made in an email from the opposition “Independent” Group (IPG) to Council Leader David Simpson is ‘wrong’.

The email’s central claim that householders could be, in three years, paying an extra £1000 in Council Tax, has been debunked by Cabinet Member for Finance, Cllr Alec Cormack.

In this week’s news section this newspaper reports on that emailed claim.

The email says that the current administration could increase council tax by 16.31% not only for 2024/25 but also increase it by the same amount in 2025/26 and 2026/27.

That claim is wrong, Cabinet Member for Finance, Cllr Alec Cormack has said.

The Council’s Medium-Term Financial Plan (MTFP), to which Cllr Murphy refers to as the authority for his claim, states that after a 16.31% rise for the next financial year, a 7.5% rise will be needed in the following two years to balance the books over three years.

A further point the email makes, referring to the current rate of consumer price inflation, is also an irrelevant and egregious point.

Former Council leaders Jamie Adams and John Cwmbetws Davies, who sit on the IPG benches, know that the consumer inflation rate has nothing to do with inflationary pressures on the Council. Those pressures are cumulative and involve – amongst other things – energy prices, the cost of delivering services, staff pay rises and their accompanying pension contributions. 

To pretend that the rate of inflation consumers face when buying goods in shops – and food inflation remains in double digits – has much of anything to do with the cost pressures facing employers and service providers is demonstrably false. Those making the claim either do not understand how inflation works or are disingenuous.

Giving the IPG the benefit of the doubt, the email’s author(s) are fools rather than knaves.

MURPHY’S LAW AS IPG GO FOR BROKE

The email, sent by Cllr Huw Murphy on behalf of the “Independent” Group, also contains a veiled threat to throw the Council into turmoil by voting down the annual budget and Council Tax resolutions.

The local authority may become insolvent if the Council cannot or councillors will not set a balanced budget. If that happens, local government commissioners will take control of the Council’s operations.

While that is an extreme event, it is not without precedent in Wales.

When Ynys Mon Council was riven by internecine strife and unable to perform its functions, the Welsh Government stepped in and took control. However, that had nothing to do with that authority’s financial position.

Local government commissioners are running several English councils after financial disasters. In those councils’ cases, speculative investments, and in Birmingham’s case, a devastating legal case, left them unable to fund statutory services.

The results have been massive service reductions, large hikes in Council Tax (from bases much higher than Pembrokeshire’s), and huge job losses.

The idea that the fault for that would lie with the Cabinet and councillors supporting the current proposal is laughable.

Suppose the Council descends into effective insolvency because councillors prefer striking poses to doing their jobs. In that case, the fault will be wholly on the IPG and anyone who supports their shameless manoeuvring.

Their ultimate goal is regaining control of the Council at May’s Annual General Meeting. Anything they do beforehand, including at March 7’s budget meeting, serves that end.

The “Independents” know that if the Council doesn’t significantly raise the Council Tax this year, it must make much larger rises in future years.

The IPG is gambling that, by the time those budgets are set, it will control the Cabinet and avoid making those rises by their favoured method of gutting services, avoiding expenditure on essential projects, and firing workers.

An IPG leader and Cabinet will make sad noises about those and blame its predecessors.

IPG REFUSED TO SWALLOW OWN MEDICINE

It is not as if the IPG is without its own ideas. 

Cllr Murphy’s email artlessly reveals the true position.

As things stand, no alternative budget exists before the Council on March 7.

But there could have been.

The IPG produced its own budget and discussed it with the Council’s Director of Resources, Jon Haswell.

Mr Haswell, or so Mr Murphy claims, said that some of what the IPG proposed was feasible and would result in a lower-than-proposed Council Tax increase.

They baulked when Mr Haswell told the “Independent” delegation the size of the rise their proposals would entail.

In other words, the combined brainpower of the “Independent” Group came up with a practical alternative that would have reduced the size of the Council Tax rise, balanced the books, and met the Council’s statutory obligations but – and for entirely self-serving political reasons – pulled the plug on it.

That throws the 7.5% increase Cllr Murphy’s email refers to into stark relief.

It shows his “suggestion” is nothing more than a meaningless gesture that the “Independent” Group KNOWS is undeliverable. It attempts to blackmail the Cabinet into agreeing to a lower rise by raising the threat of political chaos, even though the “Independent” Group KNOWS the 7.5% figure is nonsense.

The IPG would rather blow up the Council and rule the wreckage than do anything constructive.

They will not bear that shame alone. If the Conservative group supports the “Independent” Group’s game-playing, the political fallout in an election year could be highly damaging in Mid and South Pembrokeshire, a seat it hopes to win.

Doubtless, there will be behind-the-scenes scuttling as the players of political games try and get a meaningless “compromise” over the line. They face the obvious question: how many social workers, teachers, and other job losses are you prepared to countenance for the sake of a sordid deal?