A SADDLEWORTH councillor has hit out at what he says is the blocking of an attempt to freeze council tax.
The Labour-led borough authority is proposing a 4.99 per cent increase, the maximum amount allowed without holding a referendum, at its meeting on Wednesday, March 4.
However, the Conservative group has been working up an alternative which seeks to freeze general taxation – the fifth time they put a pause forward.
Yet its leader, Saddleworth South’s Cllr Max Woodvine, claims one of Oldham Council’s most senior officials blocked their amendment.
Their proposed freeze would be funded by a series of budget reductions including reducing a costly layer of senior management, cutting printing, photocopying and posting costs, scrapping the council’s newspaper and saving money on procurement and tendering contracts.
Cllr Woodvine claims the proposals which would result in more than £5 million of savings.
But he has been left furious at the decision to prevent them from being subject to the proper scrutiny process.
He said: “The whole budget setting process has been shambolic from start to finish.
“All political groups were promised administrative support to produce budget proposals, however, what we received was rendered ineffective.
“Many of the proposals, which we are now told are not viable, have been put forward by our group in the past and allowed to progress to the next stage.
“All of our savings come from non-statutory, non-essential spending – no frontline services were affected.
“However, we were told by the borough solicitor that our budget amendment will be blocked unless we endorse increasing council tax by at least 4.99 per cent.
“Any Conservative group I lead will never support an increase in taxation.
“Oldham’s residents are already overburdened – our priority is to cut wasteful spending and let the tax paying public in our borough keep more of their hard-earned money.”
Cllr Woodvine says he was told the justification for the decision is that freezing council tax reduces the authority’s overall base budget and therefore its spending power.
However, he has challenged this point of view, adding: “It is not the role of employees to set policy, that is our responsibility as politicians.
“Talk of reducing the base budget is nonsense. It was this very council that wrote off £10 million in owed council tax and has failed to collect more than £60 million since 2011.
“This decision is nothing but an affront to democracy. The officer class at Oldham Council should remember that it is their job to deliver on the decisions made by democratically elected members and the residents who put us there.
“Instead, they are choosing to save their jobs and trying to justify their existence and generous salaries.”
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