A County Councillor in Lichfield has admitted he is “furious” over the decision by Staffordshire Police Authority to raise their section of the Council Tax.
The Government sets a legal limit on how far taxes such as this can raise and Cllr Matthew Ellis (Cons, Lichfield Rural East) has claimed the Police Authority have gone to the wire on the rise.
And Cllr Ellis has also accused the Authority of “setting tax without public accountability”.
He added:
“As someone who takes our democracy and the electoral accountability which goes with it very seriously I’m furious that Staffordshire Police Authority, which is not electorally accountable, have set a local tax increase only fractionally under the government’s legal maximum. If it wasn’t for that legal limit I’m sure it would have been even higher.
“At the County, we’ve sweated blood to keep the council tax rise under inflation and the lowest increase in Staffordshire since 1993. Just 1.9 per cent despite the problems we inherited from the previous Administration. At the Police Authority, unelected magistrates and unelected ’appointees’ can impose local tax on the public in Staffordshire and there’s nothing that we, even with our winning electoral mandate, can do about it.
“Setting tax without public accountability is unacceptable in 2010.”
No-one from Staffordshire Police Authority was available for comment.
