These pages provide some practical information about council
tax, how it is calculated and advice about how to pay. You
can also download our Council Tax leaflet which is distributed to
every household in the district
The Council budgets for expenditure on its services, less income
from specific activities including car park charges, planning and
building regulation fees, trade waste, etc. This leaves £15,034,500
which is met by grant from the Government (£6,915,500) and council
taxpayers (£8,119,000). The proportion met by grant has fallen from
66% in 1993 to 46% in 2010, leaving more to find from council
taxpayers.
The grant system tends to favour deprived areas of the country
so that South Lakeland does less well than other councils and does
not always benefit from national increases in grant funding: for
example in 2010/11 the grant increase is only 0.5%. This has a
direct impact on council taxpayers since it turns a 1.0% increase
in the Council’s budget into a 2.8% increase in council tax.
The Council’s budget takes account of inflation and increases in
its fees and charges, together with identified trends for
additional expenditure. Continued low interest rates have
significantly affected the budget as have other effects of the
economic downturn, notably Planning and Building Control income. A
major exercise has reduced expenditure by £1,670,000 which has
enabled the Council to absorb pay and price increases but has
restricted investment in improved services to £396,100.
Reserves are being used to pay for certain one-off items of
expenditure. £91,100 is being added to the working balance to
strengthen its position at the end of 2010/11.