The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
A councillor has called on everyone using Spalding’s council-owned facilities to be careful with energy usage as the share of council tax town residents pay has increased.
The Spalding Special Expense is to go up for a band D property by 90p a year from £24.57 to £25.47.
The rise, with more households, is projected to bring in £240,279 for the town, a meeting of the Spalding Town Forum was told last week as part of its draft budget.
The extra does not go to the biggest costs in the budget, which are settled by South Holland District Council, and are estimated to be hit with 150 per cent rises in utility costs.
The big rises include £44,360 spent on the Sir Halley Stewart ground during the 23/24 financial year, up from £36,250 and Ayscoughfee Gardens costing £49,199, up from £44,390.
Coun Roger Gambba-Jones said: ““Energy costs are one of the things we find it difficult to do any pro-active management of in the short term.
“All we can do is encourage any user of any of our facilities to be as prudent as possible when they are using them.
“I know Priory Road has a lot of energy efficient messages in it but that doesn’t mean all our facilities have the same, and it’s been an issue over a number of years.
“The Sir Halley Stewart with the floodlights is a significant use of energy there.
“I don’t begrudge them that but know it’s become much more of an issue in that location.
“It may come more to the fore with the ongoing negotiations and possible developments to be to the benefit of everybody and to improve the situation.
“We need to be mindful of what we do there, not just for tax payers in Spalding, but across the piece.”
Coun Gary Taylor added: “I’m hoping with all our assets we’re looking to be as energy efficient as possible.
“This is public money and our residents are trying to be very careful particularly with how they’re using energy.”
Deputy head of finance for South Holland District Council, Sam Knowles responded that the budgets were set when “estimates were perhaps a bit higher, so we’ll ensure they’ll reflect prices.”
