Council Matters
Rooksdown Parish Council Annual Accounts 2007/2008
The draft Annual Return and Parish Accounts for 2007/2008 have now been approved for submission for audit by the parish council. These will be examined in the first place by the Internal Auditor on 22 May and subsequently submitted to the Audit Commission by end July.
Any resident wishing to raise any issues on the Accounts, may do so by appointment with the Clerk, Ron Darley, by telephoning 01256 356701/07791 548838.
2008/2009 Parish Precept
Residents may have noticed a
significant percentage
increase in the parish rate included in their 2008/9 council tax, and
the
parish council feels that an explanation should be given to residents.
Every year, the parish council
(RPC) prepares a budget
and asks the borough council (BDBC) to collect a sum of money (the
Precept) to
enable it to operate for the following year. The sum collected from
each
household is based on the number of band D equivalent properties in the
area as
at the end of November prior to the financial year it relates to. This
figure
is provided by BDBC. When RPC prepared its 2008/9 Precept, the
provisional base
figure given by BDBC was 684 and using that figure, RPC set a Precept
which
would result in a similar per household rate as in the previous year,
even
though the actual sum requested was higher than the previous year.
However, the final base figure
determined by BDBC was
only 520, because the rate of development had proved to be much slower
than
anticipated, resulting in a significant increase in the per household
parish
rate.
Regrettably,
RPC had no indication
that the base figure was to be changed to this extent, otherwise the
budget and
consequent Precept could have been adjusted to limit the per capita
effect.