Yarcombe Parish Precept Year to 31st March 2024
At a meeting of the Parish Council held on Monday 9th January 2023 the expenditure for the present financial year was discussed in order to calculate the amount of income from the Precept (the small proportion of Council Tax which funds the Parish Council) that would be required from April 2023.
As a result of multiple factors it was decided that this needed to be increased by approximately £2.70 per year for an average household (Band D). The reasons for this are that firstly that the income for the present year (Precept) amounted to £6,065.00 and the likely expenditure for the full year would amount to £7,033 an overspend against budget of about £1,000.00 which was not an acceptable position. There were several reasons for this overspend which arose from several items, a budgeted loss, higher than expected. The Clerk’s wages due to overtime spent on the FoI request in respect of Rag Lane and the expense for setting up a new e-mail system.
The meeting then went through the budget for 2023/24 line by line and each category of expenditure was discussed. Savings were agreed by deferring the cost of a new information leaflet and the installation of a defibrillator in Marsh as well as by reducing the budget for village grass cutting and general maintenance.
A large increase, £425.00, in the cost of the Insurance policy was anticipated due to the fact that the present policy arranged by a charity in Wiltshire does not adequately cover legal expenses that were required to guide the council through the interruptions to the normal business caused by the obstruction of Rag Lane.
The resultant total budgeted expenditure was agreed at £6,642.00 and to balance the books an increase in precept was required ; I explained that I had anticipated an increase would be required and had discussed this with the financial officer at East Devon District Council, who had informed me that there was no restriction on the amount that the precept might be raised and that that for each 1% increase in the precept the rates payable for each individual householder in the parish would increase by £0.27.
A resolution to raise the precept by 7.5% was not passed since this would not cover the costs of the Council for next year but a resolution to raise the precept by 10% was agreed by a majority. This will raise an additional £606.50 which will cover the budgeted expenses, this would result in the income for next year rising to £6,671.00 which would cover estimated expenditure of £6,642.00
I sincerely hope you will understand the need to increase expenditure and as a consequence each household will have to pay a small extra sum on the rates bill, about £2.70 per household to cover these costs.
SJ Horner
Chairman Yarcombe Parish Council