The exact amount Nottinghamshire residents will pay in council tax next year will not be known until January, the County Council’s leader has said.
Under the previous Conservative administration, Nottinghamshire County Council hiked tax by 4.84 per cent – just under the maximum allowed limit.
The authority is now led by Reform UK.
Council leader, Cllr Mick Barton says that the amount of council tax residents will pay next year will not be discussed until January.
He said the council would wait until it knew how much money the Labour Government would give it in a financial settlement.
Settlements are awarded to all councils every year, with the amount revealed in December.
The Government has also promised that multi-year financial settlements would be provided – rather than an annual settlement – to allow councils to better plan over the longer term.
However Cllr Barton says the Government is yet to inform them if the multi-year settlement will arrive this year.
“Council tax, until we know what we are going to get off the Government, then we can’t talk about council tax until January,” he said.
“We’ve not heard about the multi-year settlement. It’ll either give us some relief or some more head-scratching to do. I don’t think we will get much relief.”
The Nottinghamshire Conservative group has raised its concerns over council tax going up in the county next year, which it says follows reports that eight Reform-run councils across the country could increase it.
A cabinet member at Kent County Council recently said services were already down to the “bare bones”- and that council tax may have to rise by the maximum amount.
But responding to the concerns Kent’s leader also claimed it was too early to determine.
Cllr Sam Smith, Conservative leader of the opposition at Nottinghamshire County Council, said: “If Reform in Kent and elsewhere have already admitted they can’t keep their promises, what confidence can residents in Nottinghamshire possibly have? We’re seeing the same pattern – big talk during the campaign, and backtracking once the reality of running services sets in.”
It comes as the Reform-led council is expected to complete its own efficiency review by the end of the year in a bid to cut costs.
Upon winning the election to take control of the authority, Reform’s county council leader Cllr Barton said in June the party’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – which looks at reducing government spending – would be helping the council and its staff identify savings.
It was planned that the savings department would be used in newly controlled Reform councils across the country, but so far, the department has only visited a select few authorities.
Cllr Barton said DOGE had not visited Nottinghamshire; instead, a team of his councillors and officers is currently undertaking their own “efficiency review.”
He said the review would deliver millions in savings and has already been a success – but declined to go into detail.
“The efficiency review has been successful so far, but there could be bumps in the road,” Cllr Barton said.
“We opened up and said we welcome DOGE. But for reasons out of my control it didn’t get started. But we are all doing our own work anyway, if you want to call it ‘DOGE-ing’.
“The cost savings are still happening and that will be finished in the next couple of months. That will save us millions of pounds.
“We are doing an efficiency review. That is going to carry on and hopefully we will have that finished before Christmas.
“When you come into a new authority you want to see where you are with the pounds. We’ve started that efficiency review and we will deliver millions of pounds of savings. I cannot say what they are yet, but we are not cutting services.
“We are in a budgeting period. We’ve had two budget meetings, we’ve got 10 of them planned and the efficiency review we are a third of the way through.
“We are going through every department to see where we can save money. We are not cutting any services and we are not laying any staff off.”
