Dear Parishioners,

Dunkerton & Tunley Parish Council Funding

The parish council’s work is funded by the precept, which you pay as part of your Council Tax. Each parish council determines its own level of precept to fund its work through an annual budget setting exercise, but the billing of it is undertaken by the local Council – in our case, by BANES.

The activities funded include:

• The employment of our highly experienced clerk, who is also our Responsible Financial Officer
• Training for councillors and staff
• Maintenance of our various parish assets such as phone boxes, green spaces including land owned by the parish, bus shelters, street lighting
• Room hire costs for parish council meetings
• Maintenance of the parish website (by law the parish council has to be able to display information such as agendas, meetings and financial information on a website)
• Insurance

For many years when setting its annual budget the parish council did its utmost to keep the precept as low as possible. However over several years those budgets resulted in a year end deficit – the parish council’s expenditure each year had exceeded its income.

Obviously this could not go on. We could not keep eating into our reserves which, by law, have to be maintained at a minimum equivalent to three month’s expenditure.

Therefore, just over a year ago, the parish council decided to increase the precept more than usual, with the rise spread over two years to soften the blow. We are approaching April and the second of these 2 financial years, and the increase as planned will amount to £9.01 per annum (based on a Band D household). For an individual household (based on Band D) this equates to 17p a week.

Based on research on the level of precepts in other similarly sized parishes within Bath and North East Somerset, the level of precept still remains lower than many and is below the national average.

Your parish council, in keeping with most other parish councils, has only the one source of income: the precept. We are investigating other possible sources of income by diversifying the use of parish council owned land. One example is the cricket ground in Dunkerton where, thanks to the cooperation of the Bristol Lions cricket club, we have been able to reduce significantly the costs to the parish council of its maintenance.

Thank you for your continued support. Your councillors will endeavour to continue maintaining the parish for as low a cost to you as possible.

Regards

Cllr David Orme, Chairman Dunkerton & Tunley Parish Council