Alnwick Town Council set precept

Alnwick Town Council has voted to increase its precept by £22,885 in 2017/18. This equates to an annual increase of £8.59 per Band D dwelling (16.5p per week).

The increased precept in 2017/18 will help fund an additional £3,000 on providing much needed replacement equipment in the town’s toilets (as NCC are currently not in a position to fund this), an additional £1,150 to support local town events, £3,500 to provide a Town promotion tourism leaflet, an additional £985 for floral planting and £2,000 allocated towards the cost of repairs to the war memorial.

In the current year, the grants to local organisation’s budget was £11,000, but given the increased demand for assistance, this will be increased to £16,000 next year, an additional £4,000 has been earmarked towards the delivery of economic development activity with local businesses (this commenced in 2016/17).

As part of the budget the Town Council also agreed to take over the ownership and responsibility of the fingerpost signage in the Town, these are currently owned by the County Council and are in need of refurbishment and a budget of £7,000 has been earmarked.  The Town Council anticipate commencing the installation of a new CCTV system in the Town in April and a budget of £5,000 has also been created towards the annual maintenance and replacement costs.

Town Mayor, Councillor Alan Symmonds said, “Our budget has been carefully considered and whilst we are able to absorb some additional costs, our increases next year arise from taking on new responsibilities and the desire and need to improve the town’s infrastructure and give further assistance to local organisations”.

The total town council precept for 2017/18 will be £267,138 which for a Band D dwelling will be just over £100 per annum.  Alnwick Town Council’s precept is likely to be close to the Northumberland Town Council average. The Town Council itself receive less than 6% of the average council tax bill, approximately 89% of which goes to the county council and the remainder to the police.