Lincolnshire County Council eyes 5% council tax rise and using £7 million of reserves in bid to battle rising costs

Lincolnshire County Council will consider raising council tax as high as 5% and dipping into £7 million of its reserves in a bid to cover escalating costs.

The authority’s executive will meet on Tuesday (January 9) to discuss the proposed 2024/25 budget – and figures put to councillors currently suggest using £7.2 million of its reserves and a 2.99% council tax increase.

However, this could be put up to as high as 4.99% if the executive decided it would rather use less of its reserves.

For a Band D property paying £1,503.63 to the county council in 2023/24, a 4.99% rise would be an additional £75.03 per year.

A 2.99% increase would equate to £44.96 a year.

“Within the context of setting this budget, achieving the maximum funding would mean increasing council tax by 5%,” said the report.

“The budget proposal currently assumes increasing the rate by 2.99%, although does reference the different options being considered.

“This would ensure the council is best placed to navigate any potential future challenges.”

Parish/town councils, district councils and the police and crime commissioner also have to decide what happens to their share of the bill in the coming weeks.

More stories like this delivered straight to your inbox every morning - sign up to The Briefing here.

For the 2024/25 financial year LCC has a budget requirement of £639.1m, an increase of 5.8% from 2023/24. This comes despite cost savings of around £19 million in Lincolnshire.

The report added this is due to ‘a number of unavoidable cost pressures and other increases in expenditure due to changes in service specific grants’, including adult care and community wellbeing, children’s services fire and rescue

“The council’s funding base could be estimated with reasonable accuracy 12 months ago, based on the Government’s announcements at the time. Since then, inflation has remained higher for longer and demand continued to increase,” the report summary explained.

“Despite calls from the sector to increase funding to support with additional cost, the Government opted to continue with existing spending plans.

“The council will be able to increase its funding in 2024/25, although not to the full extent that costs have increased.”

The report added that it was ‘important to emphasise that there is significant funding uncertainty beyond 2024/25, which is a significant barrier to long-term financial planning for both revenue and capital investment’.

What do you think? Are you happy to pay more? Post your thoughts in the comments below