RATES bills will go up by 6.8% in April.
That applies to both household and business rates throughout Ards and North Down, and is the highest hike in the council’s eight years in existence.
According to local officials, the increase should equate to an extra £36 over the course of the coming financial year for the average home in the borough, while bumping up the annual bill by £96 for the average business.
The rates rise was voted through at a meeting on Tuesday night – though the move split the council, with Alliance, the Greens and one independent voting against it.
An Alliance attempt to set a cheaper 6.38% rise was voted down by unionists, as it would have involved only collecting grey bins once every three weeks, plus cutting back opening hours at several smaller Household Recycling Centres and axing the council’s current policy of supplying free caddy liners for food waste recycling.
Amid an angry two-hour debate on Tuesday night, the DUP decried Alliance’s idea as an attempt to sneak an unpopular and untested policy in through the back door, while attacking the party as financially irresponsible.
Alliance accused unionists of dragging their heels over necessary and money-saving changes to waste management, amid a two-year crisis that has seen the council’s recycling figures plummet while landfill fees skyrocket.
Councillors said that the 6.8% rise is needed to pay for cost increases due to inflation and the fuel price crisis, as well as staff wage boosts agreed after strike action last year.
Mayor Karen Douglas stated that the council was originally staring at costs that were between £9m and £10m higher compared to the current year due to all of those pressures.
But around £4m has been shaved off that increase by paring spending back on some council projects in order to concentrate on running essential services, as well as cranking up fees for some services and facilities the local authority provides.
Official documents show that several large projects the council either wants or needs to carry out will be split over two to three years, instead of trying to do the whole thing in a single year.
For example, more than £5m needs to be spent fixing Bangor Aurora Leisure Centre’s storm-damaged roof and replacing its moveable floors. Budgets show that although the floors are mainly to be tackled in the coming year, nothing will be done about the roof until the 2024/25 financial year, with the repairs not finished until the year after that.
Schemes to redevelop Whitespots Country Park outside Ards, revamp Bangor’s Ward Park, and boost the council’s provision of cemetery spaces will have a comparatively small amount of money put into them in the coming year, followed by slightly more the year after with the guts of the projects to happen in 2025/26.
Some schemes – including a Newtownards to Conlig greenway, Portaferry’s long-awaited public realm revamp, and dredging Ward Park’s ponds – are budgeted to mostly take place in the coming year, before being finished off the year after.
Two long-delayed projects, a 3G pitch in Portavogie and a new playground in Ashbury area of Bangor, are both budgeted to be carried out in full in the coming year.
Several of those big projects, including the greenway, have been stated to be largely funded by Stormont grants, and it’s known that the council was also looking for grants to pay for some of the others, including the Portaferry revamp.
Announcing the rate, the Mayor said that councillors had wanted to make sure the financial burden placed on taxpayers is as low as possible at a time when homes and businesses are facing exceptional difficulties.
Despite originally looking at a rates rise of around 20%, the council had managed to cut that figure by more than half by driving expenditure down, bringing in energy-saving measures, deferring as much expenditure as possible, and paring back large construction projects and recruitment drives.
“Any increase in bills is never a good news story for households, particularly in the current climate,” said Ms Douglas, “but I want to reassure our ratepayers that we will continue to scrutinise council spend.
“We remain committed to making further efficiency savings wherever possible, while maintaining and enhancing our services, continuing to invest in the borough and to progressing our council-wide transformation agenda.”
During Tuesday night’s debate, several councillors stated that they were pleased the council had managed to set a rate below the rate of inflation, which currently sits at around 10%.
The 6.8% figure is exactly mid-table in terms of the 11 councils throughout Northern Ireland; while five local authorities went for even higher hikes, another five announced smaller increases than Ards and North Down will bring in.
