The chairman of the County Councils Network has said his local authority would ‘waste’ up to £2m if it were to hold a council tax referendum.
Proposing a 1.99% increase for Surrey CC, leader David Hodge said his authority needed a 2.5% hike but he did not want to go above the referendum threshold that has yet to be announced by the Government.
Cllr Hodge said: ‘While it puts more pressure on services, we’ll still be able to provide what residents expect with this increase.
‘With the number of vulnerable adults we help increasing by 1,000 over the next three years at a cost of £25m and a leap in pupil numbers meaning we need to spend £327m on school places by 2019, the pressure on services from demographic changes is enormous.
‘On top of these challenges, we have to cope with the impact of other costs that are also completely out of our control, such as the bill of up to £10m to fix our roads after the recent floods and the £5m we spent last year on repairing the damage caused by ice and snow.’
The council’s cabinet will meet to make a formal recommendation next Tuesday, 4 February, and a final decision will be taken at a meeting of Surrey’s full council on 11 February.
