Precept Increase

A former Parish Councillor asked why the Parish precept was raised by 25.7% this year and a few people said “Yeah, what have Bowes Parish Council ever done for us and how can they justify this massive increase in our rates?”

I’ll try to answer that question.

To put it into context it was a rise of £6.14 to take the precept payable on a Band D property in Bowes Parish to £30 and it represents an increase of 12p per property per week. The £30 rate sits in 80th position from the most expensive out of the 108 County Durham Parished areas. There are 16 non-parished areas where no, or a very low, precept is levied. Gilmonby is one of those but the residents there benefit from spending by Bowes Parish Council on things like cemetery provision and the free commemorative mugs we’ve provided over the years. There are several County Durham parishes where the parish rate is over £200 per property: Looking at a local spread, Barnard Castle’s rate is £105.50, Barningham’s is £34.45 and Boldron’s, a non-parished area, is £5.10.

Bowes Parish Council have tried hard to keep the rate in the lower scale of parish precepts and have done this through reducing reserves and also by gaining as much income from outside sources as possible. The last time we raised the precept was in 2015 when it went up by 0.78% which equated to £29 in total.

What services do we provide for residents for the rate and how do we justify the increase?

Well, reserves are reducing and our plan is to retain as much as possible for any necessary extension to the cemetery which will be a big ticket item. Bowes Parish Council is the Burial Board for Bowes and Gilmonby. Our cemetery charges are probably the lowest in the County if not the Country and people have told us that they want us to continue to perform the function of a Burial Board as the alternative is to hand the cemetery over to the County Council and, if we were to do that, the cost of a resident’s burial plot would rise to £1160 plus VAT from £150, the current rate for an exclusive right of burial for a resident of Bowes and Gilmonby. We used to receive a grant from Durham County Council (DCC) to reflect the fact that we provided these services but this double-funding grant has now ended and the Durham rate, which went up by 3% (in money terms by £44.31 per Band D household), also includes a charge to residents for cemetery provision throughout the County, hence the now removed double-funding grant.

We used to have a contract with English Heritage to look after the castle grounds but this stopped when they became Historic England and we lost a considerable source of income as a result.

We provide allotments at a subsidised rate but negotiations are ongoing with the landowners and we will probably have to revise the charges made to allotment holders in order to properly cover future costs and responsibilities.

We provide the children’s playpark and recently renewed all the play equipment there as well as continually maintaining it at a lower cost to residents by having our Councillors carry out as much of the work as we can under Health and Safety legislation and insurance requirements.

We contract out all the grass-cutting and this costs about 25% of the revenue expenditure. The Clerk’s fee, a nationally agreed amount, accounts for about 30% of expenditure and the Councillors reckon that we get full value from the work of our Clerk!

We contract the maintenance of a small flower and shrub garden by the Annums and the flower tubs by the Post Box in order to enhance the village environment. We are grateful here for the work of volunteers who litter pick and we’re buying some equipment to help them to carry out these tasks safely. Other volunteers clear snow from the pavements and we would, if asked, purchase some basic equipment to support them too!

This year we upgraded the area outside the cemetery and that by the post box to make a more resilient surface so that vehicles can park by the cemetery gates without tearing up the surface and people can walk on the grass by the post box, benches and bus shelter without getting their shoes too muddy. The work cost more than £1000 but we reckoned it as money well spent on improving these previously scruffy areas.

We provided a bus shelter for children in which they can wait for the school transport; we provide the Parish Council notice board where the Agenda and Minutes and Accounts are posted after every meeting. We have a Parish Council website (https://www.hugofox.com/community/bowes-parish-council-7943/home) where this information is also available without anyone having to make a request under Freedom of Information acts. We don’t operate in secrecy and our meetings are open to all and, in my own over 35 years as a Parish Councillor, I can only recall one instance when we entered a closed session where the Press and public were excluded.

We pay an annual premium to insure all the Parish’s equipment and premises and staff against liability claims.

We published a set of leaflets describing the Parish Paths and have enjoyed a fruitful relationship with DCC to utilise Parish Paths Partnership money to maintain stiles and gates and dog stiles on the network throughout the Parish.

We provide and maintain a number of benches around the Parish for weary walkers.

We’ve just initiated a poster competition for the school children to raise awareness of the nuisance of dog dirt in and around the village and we’ll give a book voucher prize to the winning entries.

Your Parish Council provided commemorative mugs for every resident in the Parish of Bowes and the Non-Parished area of Gilmonby to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II and to commemorate the ending of the Great War (WW1). Some households received 6 free mugs! We made a successful application to the Covenant Fund and received 10 silhouettes (£750 value) to display in the church and at the houses where The Fallen of Bowes and Gilmonby lived before their service on the weekend of the Centenary of the Armistice of the 1914-1918 war.

We have even (jokingly) discussed what resilience measures we might need to make in the event of a Hard Brexit 😉.

I hope that you can agree that we provided good value for money for the £4000 or so that we used to enhance the lives and the environment that we all enjoy. If you’d like to know more about the work of the Parish Council you’ll be very welcome at our meetings and you could even come to the Annual Parish Meeting that hasn’t been attended by any member of the tax-paying public for the past 5 years or so! We never take this as an expression of satisfaction with our work and don’t become complacent about the services we provide or request your hard-earned money unnecessarily, but strive to carry out our civic duties responsibly, fiscally prudently and to maximum advantage to the residents of our great parish and the surrounding area.