Sir,
Might I respond to Pembrokeshire County Council's latest 'Value For Money' booklet explaining expenditure of Council Tax?
Though recognising and valuing what PCC does on the whole, it certainly doesn't feel like value for money sometimes to those council taxpayers footing the majority of the bill for expenditure, leaving aside commercial business.
I refer mainly to those who own houses in high pay band estates. Developers took the risk when building them, house owners took the risk when buying, working and paying the mortgages. There was no risk to councils, who adopted roads and services only after completion to a high standard, low maintenance.
Now, though, there are many examples where these mature owners are living on pensions, with zero returns from any investments they might have worked and saved hard for, who are the very lowest consumers of all of council services, water, electricity, sewage, energy, rubbish collection or anything else you care to mention, but are easy targets for high council taxes because of their original desire to improve their circumstances and standard of living, usually at a personal cost unwilling to be undertaken by others.
A rhetorical question this: Is it fair that the very lowest consumers, carrying minimal financial burden for the council, pay the highest taxes? And why do they pay the highest taxes? Because the council knows very well that due to their previous foresight, hard work, care with personal finances and a desire to better themselves, they are able to. If they had been less careful, more profligate, less responsible, they wouldn't be able to.
Those may be the bald facts for PCC as far as Council Tax is concerned, but it doesn't make it right and it isn't justice!
A. Stewart,
Pembroke.