A war chest by any other name

12.59.28am GMT Sat 4th Mar 2006

Local government budgeting is confusing enough without the sort of misleading statements made by Cllr Tony Rooth as reported in last weeks Surrey Advertiser ("Tories react angrily to 'war chest' claims").

Firstly to correct Cllr Rooth's own little bit of "fantasy finance". He asks where the Liberal Democrats would find £140,000 in future budgets to fund free bus passes for the elderly, claiming this could add 2% to council tax. Nonsense, Cllr Rooth. Since that cost is already in the Council's budget, it will be automatically funded in future years.

The reason Lib Dems have called the £300,000 "Invest to Save reserve" a war chest is that it is not committed to any specified services or improvements, contrary to the Tory claims. They made vague comments about "insurance policies, information technology and schemes that would reduce on-going energy costs", but gave no estimates of the revenue savings that would result. No private company would agree to invest nearly £1/3 million without clear forecasting of the financial benefits, and neither should a council charged with looking after public money.

If these vague schemes were judged to be not worthwhile, the entire amount would be available to re-allocate in next year's budget. Or not! That could allow council tax to be cut by 5% in an election year. Looks like a war chest to me.

This is real money out of residents' pockets NOW. Surely Guildford's council tax payers would prefer a below-inflation increase of 1.85% now, as the Lib Dems proposed, rather than paying a 2.48% increase to fund a Tory war chest for 2007.