Opinion: If Our Local Culture and Heritage Is Important – We Must Be Prepared to Pay For It

Published on: 10 Oct, 2015
Updated on: 13 Oct, 2015

By Gordon Bridger

Hon alderman and former mayor

As Benjamin Franklin said: “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”  Most us do our best to mitigate the effect of both.

But when it comes to taxes, especially Guildford’s council tax, many of us, including our elected councillors, sometimes lose a sense of perspective while instinctively seeking to minimize any fiscal “burden”.

Not that one should wish to discourage elimination of waste or more efficient use of our council tax. There is always room for both. But it can seem that cutting council expenditure has become an end in itself – and the phrase “we can’t afford it” is used to do away with any services regarded as unessential.

I recall the fuss about the £100,000 annual subsidy for a shuttle bus service which it was claimed “we could not afford”, or the ending of the subsidy to the orchestra, cut on the same grounds.

The argument that we can’t afford certain council expenditure needs to be challenged. Guildford, according to one major national survey, is, excluding parts of London, the wealthiest community in Britain. Anyway, the Guildford borough component of the council tax really is an insignificant proportion of our income.

Probably far too few people read their annual tax bill and are unaware that this year, per household, Guildford Borough Council will receive only £152 for a band D property. Put another way, on average each resident pays only £67 annually.

Meanwhile the average gross annual income in the Guildford area is reported to be £34,000, so, for most of us, our local tax burden is, in comparison, tiny, an absurdly small sum.

Years ago as the councillor responsible for finance I persuaded our treasurer to reduce our annual council tax – the first time it had been done in decades – but the impact was disappointing. No resident was really impressed or concerned because the borough council element of our council council tax was under 10 per cent of the total and went unnoticed.

So, in future, when councillors want to reduce expenditure they should bear this in mind, especially when decisions affect the efforts of voluntary societies, so important to our community.

The action to eject the Surrey Archaeological Society from their two rooms in Guildford Museum is, at least, unfortunate. I believe our councillors were badly advised. The society has for over a hundred years carried out splendid work on our behalf. We all benefit when our local knowledge is increased. I do hope this error can be rectified.

Now, as we have been recently been made aware, the future of the Electric Theatre is also under review. A reappraisal of the financing may be justified but I hope it does not lead to the ejection of GATA (Guildford Amateur Theatre Association) and other voluntary organizations without which, it must be remembered, we would not even have got the theatre.

Another example is the use of the Guildhall. It should be available to charities and community organizations but instead it is grossly underused because they are charged 50 per cent the commercial rate – a rate charities and community organizations cannot afford.

We know that the council, due to central government pressure, needs to save around £500,000 per year in a few years time. But this forecast has been postulated on a tax restriction increase of 1.9 per cent, per year, a restriction that will be nullified by the government’s recent, and welcome, decision to allow councils to keep the business rates they raise.

I am sure everyone welcomes our councillors efforts to ensure we have an economically well run borough, but that does not mean, as a prosperous community, we need to or should thoughtlessly abandon or discourage community activities on financial grounds.

You simply cannot measure everything in pounds and pence.

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