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15 November 2023
Issue no. 157
ISSN 2632-3389
Bridge that gap As Somerset Council complains of a £40m+ gap in its finances for 2023/24, The Leveller® discovers another one Over the next couple of years we will hear a lot about Somerset Council being short of money. An awful lot. Mainly because it is quite genuinely short of money. Starved of funds by the coalition government’s austerity programme, the funding crisis has become ever more critical over the past 13 years. The Council forecasts that it will have a budget deficit for 2023/24 of £42m. Liz Leyshon, Deputy Leader of the Council and the holder of Resources and Performance portfolio has outlined 17 different ways that the council could save money. Following some questions by The Leveller, we can suggest an 18th. One way the Council could balance the books next year, if not perhaps in the following years, is by collecting the council tax that it is owed. In the old two tier system with district and county councils, it was the district councils that issued council tax bills and were responsible for collecting the amounts due. The bills they collected did include money owed to county, towns and parishes, the fire brigade and police, but still it was the districts that administered them. That means they not only sent the bills out, but were responsible for collecting the money due. From 1 April this year, that job falls to the new Somerset Council. (See p26)
Glastonbury was awarded a gold medal and the prestigious Preece Cup for the town’s floral displays in this year’s South West in Bloom awards (see p18)
Queens College
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