Read more on this

Read more on this

Putting up Council Tax not the answer to the gaping hole in social care funding say Lib Dems

by Ian Shires on 15 December, 2016

557_iStock_000004996552Medium“Forcing cash strapped councils to further increase council tax is not the answer to the social care funding gap”

Cllr Ian Shires, Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Walsall’s Health and Wellbeing Board attacked the Government of being clueless as to how to deal with the looming care service crisis.

Cllr Shires said. “The 2% increase in Council Tax this year will have brought in nationally around £360 million. That still leaves a predicted gap of some £2.2 billion by 2020. Council Tax would need to increase by somewhere in the region a massive 14% to deal with the problem. Even this ignores any inflationary pressures that face the providers of the service.

“If Council Tax was a fair way of paying for the growing social care needs then some might say it was acceptable. But it is not fair. People in Walsall living in a terraced house already pay as much as the owner of a luxury flat in Westminster. That’s how unfair this system is. Poor people pay a much higher proportion of their income in Council Tax than do rich people.

“In places like Walsall the needs of the extremely poor will be paid by the very poor if the Government continue to insist on using Council Tax to resolve a problem which is of their making.

“What is needed is a national debate about this issue if we are to effectively and fairly deal with the tsunami of problems coming out of the fact that we are all living longer.”

   Leave a comment

Leave a Reply

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>