Contact: Jon Pittam, ext 7400

1 Summary

1.1 The Cabinet is asked to note the attached report on the enquiries and complaints received about the County Council's council tax and budget for 2002/03.

2 Reason(s)

2.1 To provide feedback on the public's response to the increase in the County Council's council tax for 2002/03 of 7.9%.

3 Other options considered and rejected

3.1 Not applicable.

4 Conflicts of interest declared by the decision maker or a member or officer consulted

4.1 Not applicable.

5 Dispensation granted by the Standards Committee

5.1 Not applicable.

6 Reason(s) for the matter being dealt with if urgent

7 Not applicable.

Approved by: Date:

Councillor T.K Thornber, C.B.E.

Contact: Jon Pittam, ext 7400

1 Summary

1.1 This report summarises statistics on the letters and telephone calls received as a result of the County Council's 2002/03 council tax and budget. It includes enquiries to Information Centres and the County Treasurer's Department, but not those made directly to County Councillors.

2 Background

2.1 The County Council provides a budget leaflet to accompany every council tax bill issued by the district councils to the 500,000 council tax payers in Hampshire. The leaflet tells people how to contact the County Council if they require further information about the budget, including a postal address, a telephone number and an e-mail address. The public also contact the County Council's Information Centres with queries and complaints about the council tax. The more technical questions are answered by staff in the County Treasurer's Department.

2.2 Callers who expressed concerns that their point of view would be ignored have been told that their comments would be reported to the Cabinet.

3 Enquiries in 2002

3.1 Press reports first began to indicate the likely scale of council tax increases at the beginning of February 2002. Since then, 224 enquiries have been received, as analysed in the table below:

3.2 Telephone calls are still the most popular method of contacting the County Council about the council tax. The number of e-mails has increased only slightly, from 7 last year to 11 in 2002.

3.3 Many of the enquiries received by the Information Centres concern the person's own council tax bill, such as payment arrangements or their entitlement to benefits and discounts. These callers have been referred to the appropriate district council.

3.4 Most of the calls from people who wish to complain about the level of the council tax or were seeking further information about the budget were referred to the County Treasurer's Department. (The statistics have been adjusted to avoid double-counting calls passed on by the Information Centres).

3.5 The enquiries dealt with by the County Treasurer's Department represent the core of those that wished to raise points of substance and a more detailed analysis has been prepared of them. The number of enquiries dealt with by the Department in 2002 at 95 was significantly higher than the previous year's total of 69. The trends are shown in the following table:

4 Rise in council tax

4.1 As in previous years, not all callers were primarily concerned about the size of the increase in the council tax, though this was still the most common reason for contacting the County Council. Some callers were clearly very angry. But it is perhaps surprising that, after many years of increases in the council tax that have been well above the rate of inflation, there has not been more popular protest about the increases. It may be that the public has accepted the argument for the need to increase spending on public services and understands that this has had to be met by increases in taxation. Some callers queried whether the level of increases is sustainable in the future.

4.2 Although it is not possible to ask too many questions about callers' personal circumstances, some of the calls were from pensioners and others on fixed incomes whose total income, whilst not rising as fast as the council tax, is still above the threshold for council tax benefits. Few, if any, of the callers were from people on low incomes who are unaware of their eligibility for benefits. Other calls appeared to be from those more able to pay but who were less willing to contribute towards the costs of services for others.

4.3 There is some correlation between the number of complaints about the council tax and the size of the increase in the tax, as the following graph shows. There is no direct link between election dates and the number of complaints about the tax.

5 Questions asked

5.1 The 95 enquirers dealt with by the County Treasurer's Department raised 152 issues. These can grouped into the following categories.

5.2 Points made by those complaining about the increase in the tax included:

· this is not just a one-off increase for 2002/03: council taxes have been increasing excessively for many years

· a shortfall in grant from the Government is no justification for making council tax payers pay more

· the County Council should cut its budget to match its income

· what steps is the County Council taking to prevent similar increases in the future?

6 Analysis by district council area

6.1 The districts from which enquiries originated are analysed in the following table:

6.2 There are probably too few enquiries to extract a clear pattern from this table. In fact, two of the more "affluent" districts (Winchester and East Hampshire) have generated the most enquiries per 10,000 taxpayers whilst Gosport is at the bottom of the table. Hart increased its own council tax by 20.9% in 2002/03 so that the increase in the combined council tax for the district, parishes, County and police is much higher than elsewhere in Hampshire, as the table shows. But that has not provoked a discernible increase in the number of enquiries from the Hart area directed to the County Council, although taxpayers may have complained directly to Hart District Council instead

Recommendation

1 That the report be noted.

Section 100D Local Government Act 1972 background papers

The following documents disclose facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and has been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

N.B. the list excludes:

1. Published works.

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

Council Taxpayer's queries 2002/03 (CT/CF/F142a)

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