Council Tax - Ask your council these questions

How much are the council's cash reserves?
How much have they increased in the last 12 months and the last 24 months?

The below story is from The Daily Telegraph.  Don't look for it on the (still biased) BBC as it doesn't fit their agenda!

New figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government will today reveal that local authorities are likely to have £10.8 billion in reserves by March – an increase of around £240 million on the previous year.

Councils are advised to keep sufficient sums of money in reserve so that they have a financial cushion to meet sudden unexpected costs.

But the extent of the cash piles may cast doubt on complaints by some local councils that they must make deep cuts to public service and cannot afford to freeze council tax.

Eric Pickles, the Local Government Secretary, last night said councils would have “room to manoeuvre on their finances next year” because of the huge amounts of cash on their books.

Soon after the Coalition came to power, Mr Pickles urged local authorities to dig into their “piggy banks” as more than 50 were holding more than £50 million in their bank accounts.

The new figures show that councils do not appear to have heeded his advice, despite planned cuts to local libraries, nurseries, road maintenance, street cleaning and other public services
Grant Shapps, the Conservative housing minister, has also previously accused Labour councils in particular of hoarding money instead of using the cash to keep public services open.
He claimed councils had been making “political cuts” that were “totally unacceptable” while sitting on vast cash reserves.
The new figures show that some of the biggest increases in reserves came from Labour-led Wakefield Council, which is expected to have more than doubled its cash pile from £21 million to £51 million by March.
Meanwhile, Labour-run Bolton Council is likely to have tripled its reserves £23 million to £81 million.
Emma Boon, campaign director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said councils should be easily able to freeze council tax given the level of reserves.
"Given the amount of reserves councils are sitting on they should at the very least all be freezing council tax this year, and many could go further,” she said.
“Local authorities could help households struggling to pay council tax, which has almost doubled in the last ten years, but instead many are hoarding large sums of taxpayers’ money. Councils should review the level of reserves as some have put aside far more as a percentage of their spending than others.”

Send letters to you local newspapers and publicly ask these questions.  Shame these councils into freezing or reducing the 2012/13 Council Tax bills.