Taunton's Titanic Tax Take
As it prepares to enter a second year, Taunton Town Council is looking to raise a precept of nearly £6m. That's three times last year. Is it reasonable? What are residents paying for? We investigate.
Somerset Confidential special SC37
Dear readers
Today’s Somerset Confidential® is for our paying subscribers. We hope you find it interesting. If you’d like to get more material like this you can subscribe for it here:
At Somerset Confidential®, we see our work as a public service – and that means you get a lot of our journalism free.
We would love to have your support to help us do more. More pieces like today’s story which needs more in depth research.
If you feel able to help us, we’ve set a paid subscription rate at £30 per annum. That’s 58p per edition, or 25% of the price of a cup of tea at Starbucks. And for that we’ll throw in some additional benefits.
Read two extra articles a month – and you know we write ‘em good and write em long! (That’s value for money right there.)
Get access to our back catalogue – you can search every shenanigan we report on. (Yes there have been a few of those!).
Comment – have your say! – on anything we write.
And experience the satisfaction of supporting the most innovative, public-service journalism project in Somerset.
Think of it like this. Support us – and support a better governed Somerset. You can join and support us here….
Thank you
Andrew Lee - editor
Taunton's Titanic Tax Take
In October 2022 as part of the reorganisation of local government in Somerset, Somerset County Council set a precept for the new Taunton Town Council of £2.114m. That was expected to allow £420k to go to reserves and to fund £1.7m of expenditure.
The 2023/24 money was meant to be spent mostly on parks, service growth and improvement, town council staff and admin and public toilets. It looks as if it will overspend for that first full year by around £26,000.
We should at this point run through a quick resume of the history. Since the 1974 reform of local government, Taunton was unique in Somerset in not having its own town council. Budgets and spending for the area were set by Taunton Deane District Council until April 2019. From then until the 1 April 2023 by the new Somerset West and Taunton District Council created by the merger of Taunton Dean with West Somerset.
When the new unitary Somerset Council was created (effective 1 April 2023) and the districts abolished, about the only thing everybody agreed on, was that Taunton should once again have its own town council.
Trying to budget for a new council is not the easiest task. However Somerset Council looked at the cost and income estimates based on amounts included in the Somerset West and Taunton District Council budget in 2022/23 for these services/assets and an estimate of the projected costs for 2023/24.
Elections duly took place and a new town council set up shop in May 2023. And they set to work with their new precept of £2.114m. At the time that was the largest precept in Somerset. Which as Taunton is the largest town in Somerset, is fair enough.
A year later and things are looking very different. On 30 January the council (made up of 19 LibDem and 1 Conservative councillors) approved a budget for 2024/25 which will require a precept request of £5,904,630.
To put that into context, that is nearly half of the council tax amount (£12.9m) set for the whole of Mendip District Council for its last year of existence (2022/23).
By any measure, £5.9m is a lot of money for a town council.