Edington Parish Council Precept 2024/2025

Edington Parish Council precept 2024/2025
The parish council met on Monday 8 January 2024 to decide upon the precept for the coming financial year.
After a lengthy discussion It was decided that the council needed to raise the precept from the 2023/2024 amount of £16,000 to €21,000 for the coming financial year. This will mean that a Band D property will incur a charge of £1.19 a wook (£62.06 per annum) against £0.91 a week in 2023/2024 (£47.28 per annum).
The reasons for the increase are set out below.
With inflation affecting everything most of the costs incurred by the council have risen over the past year and so we were forced to assurne that some inflation adjusting needed to be made to the current years figures
The grounds maintenance in the village has been put out to a new contractor following the retirement of the previous contractor. The parish council sought bids from five potential contractors of which only two submitted a statement of intent and after scrutiny by the council we chose the contractor that would incur the least Increase for the council The previous contractors annual charge was £2,100 and the new contractor will cost the council £3,824 per annum. The council also look the decision to increase the amount of grounds maintenance by including some areas previously maintained by the parish steward. As some of you may remember some grass areas went uncut for a considerable time last year as the parish steward was called away by Wiltshire Council to undertake other work and so the council decided to include these areas in the new contract to ensure regular maintenance.
Highways issues are an ongoing concern in the village and over the years the council have worked with the highways authority to introduce traffic calming measures and are planning to continue doing so in the future. However the funding regime used by Wiltshire Council for highways improvements has changed leading to an increase of costs to the parish council Previously any proposed traffic scheme under £10,000 would have required the parish council to contribute 25% of the total cost, the maximum contribution being £2.500. This has now changed to any scheme under £20,000 will require the parish council to make a 30% contribution, the maximum contribution now could be as much as £6.000. Any projects over the limits are then considered for being submitted to the Wiltshire Council substantive bid scheme which then evaluates all schemes across the county and determines which they are going to provide finance for along with a contribution from the parish council. The pansh council has no option but to budget for these increases if we are lo move forward with traffic calming in the village. As Edington is a small village with a small precept compared to many other villages and towns any increase in contributions has a significantly larger impact on the precept increase than for the larger villages and towns.
The Edington Pansh Council are aware of the ongoing Increase in living costs but were left with little choice but to increase the precept if we are to continue providing a service to the village whilst improving the environment and making the village roads safer for all users.
John Pollard
Chair Edington Parish Council
January: 2024