It was a relief to read the reassurance given by the leader and deputy leader of South Hams District Council in last week’s Gazette that residents are not being asked to bail out West Devon Borough Council.
Presumably, then, that council is solvent and is able to meet its obligations, despite currently showing a net deficit of almost £3m on its balance sheet and needing to find a further £1.1m a year by 2020 to balance its books?
That same year, according to Cllrs John Tucker and Simon Wright, South Hams will also find itself facing an annual budget gap of £0.8m. Doing nothing, they say, is not an option.
Yet the only solution being offered is to merge the two councils into one, requiring the council tax demanded of South Hams residents to rise by £62.97 per year for each band D property.
This will in effect generate an extra £2.35m a year, comfortably in excess of both the predicted £0.8m budget gap our Council faces and the £1.1m faced by West Devon.
By contrast, West Devon residents will not be asked to pay an extra penny.
More to the point, were South Hams residents merely being asked to find a further £0.8m, our council tax would only have to rise by £21.45, to £176.87 for each band D property. In other words, if such a substantial increase is not to be used to bail out West Devon, why is it necessary?
Perhaps a clue can be found in Cllrs Tucker and Wright’s later statement when they tell us that were we to allow West Devon to fail, “we would have to find another £3m year on year to run our services”.
No doubt there is more than a semantic difference to bailing out West Devon and not allowing it to fail, but it is less than immediately obvious.
Equally, if West Devon is not in danger of failing, what is to stop the residents of each council simply being asked to make good their own shortfall?
Politically that might be difficult for their Conservative councillors to justify. It could also be embarrassing for the Government. The more so were the council to actually fail.
Richard Howell
North Huish, South Brent