I’ve been a Councillor on Salford City Council since 2004, and every year on budget day, the Conservative group have tried to give something back to hard-pressed local residents by proposing real-terms cuts in Council Tax.
From the reaction of the Council’s Labour leadership, you would think that the four horsemen of the apocalypse were on call in the event that – god forbid – we might seek to give local people some value for money by way of a Council Tax freeze. One by one they rose to their feet to give dire predictions about the effect of a tax freeze on local services.
So I’m glad that – belatedly – the Labour Council have accepted that we were right all along, and that the Council could make sufficient savings to allow a Council Tax freeze. It is a shame that they are five years late – how much lower would our Council Tax be – and how much more efficient would our Council be - if they had accepted Conservative proposals over the past few years?
It is a shame also that, rather than a concerted effort to return money to hard-working local residents, this is nothing more than a one-off shameless bribe in advance of the most difficult set of elections for Labour in a generation. For local residents, Labour are offering nothing more than “buy now, pay later” – and Salford taxpayers will pay a heavy price if Labour are returned again in May.
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