The Parish Council has been informed that from April 2025 that Somerset Council, as already happening in other parts of the County, will begin charging for emptying of all waste bins not owned by but emptied by them on their regular collection rounds. The present charge in the other districts is £7.82 + VAT per bin per collection.
The consequence of this is that the Parish Council will have to take over the responsibility for emptying all of the bins it installed at the request of Parishioners. This will include both the normal waste bins and the ‘dog poo’ bins located on the Recreation Ground and at other locations in the village.
The Parish Council is already responsible for the cost of collections from the recreation ground but this leaves a further 9 bins (6 ‘dog poo’ & 3 litter bins) which will become our responsibility.
We have calculated the costs of maintaining the frequency of collection and disposal of all bin types at the same level and we estimate this to be, at the present rate, approximately £3600 + VAT per year.
This equates to almost 10% of our annual precept income and the Parish Council will be unable to fund this further cost out of the present precept income level. Consequently, it is expected that this will result in an increase to the precept charged to you within the Council Tax bill as from April 2025.
As an illustration, this alone could mean that for a typical Band ‘D’ property the precept would need to rise from the present £4.69 per month by approximately 10% or 50p per month. Properties in other Council Tax Bands will change in the same proportion.
It is important to realise that this may not be the last service currently carried out by Somerset Council which will be devolved to our Parish Council.
Just to make you aware, the annual precept for Abbas and Templecombe at £56.24 is significantly lower than similar size Parishes in the surrounding area Henstridge and Milborne Port annual precept for a Band ‘D’ property are £106.57 and £138.87 in this financial year.