Ceredigion County Council Cabinet members are being asked to back an above-inflation council tax increase of four per cent.

The increase would come despite the authority receiving a 4.2 per cent budget increase from the Welsh Government.

While a final decision will have to be made by the full council, Cabinet members received a recommendation at their meeting on Tuesday, 28 January, that council tax should increase by four per cent. Officers are asking the Cabinet to recommend that increase to the full council.

The authority has received a provisional funding increase from the Welsh Government of 4.2 per cent after grants for teachers pay and pensions were removed.

But the council’s finance department has said a four per cent council tax increase could raise £2m, which would help to meet “unavoidable increases in expenditure” of just over £8.3m.

That follows a council tax increase of seven per cent imposed for the 2019/20 financial year which councillors justified by saying that two per cent of that increase would protect schools, only for the council to admit that it had received additional funding for education.

That led to the extra two per cent in council tax being allocated to the under-pressure social services budget instead.

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