Each year Minera CC has to set a budget and submit a request to Wrexham County Borough for the funding to enable this budget to be implemented. This is known as the Precept Request, and has to be submitted by the third week in January.
We submitted our request on time, and asked for funding of £45,474, an increase over what we currently expect to spend this year of £6,426 or 16.5%
The attached file shows where the differences have arisen year on year, but here is some extra information to help you understand the decisions we’ve taken.
Most of the main expenditures which we face are items which we have to purchase at prices which we can’t control very much, if at all. These are the Clerk’s salary, insurance, the school crossing patrol, playground maintenance contact, youth services provision and electricity for our streetlights. The budgeted costs of these items reflect either the new contract prices we’ve been given or our best estimates of what we are likely to have to pay next year, and add up to £26,090, or 57% of our budget.
Other than this we have to repay the interest free loan which paid for the replacement of our streetlighting in 2020 at a cost of £2,927 per annum, and we are building up a fund for the next upgrade which we expect to perform after 2028. This fund will increase by £1,500 a year until then, and is budgeted at £3,000 next year. These items absorb another 13% of what we expect to spend.
The remaining 30% of our budget mostly represents things we are better able to control, predict or manage by changing the timing of expenditures. We have achieved savings against this year’s budget by examining options for where, when and how we spend our money, and by using our reserves to provide defibrillator cabinets and landscaping installations. We will continue to balance the reserves against the precept demand where we can in the coming years also.
Ultimately, however, we recognise that an increased precept means additional cost to the taxpayers of our community. We don’t yet have the finalised numbers from Wrexham County Borough for the increase at the individual household level, but a band D property in the Minera ward will probably face an increase of around £10 next year to support the Minera Community Council budget.
While we regret that we need to increase the precept, we will seek to make savings where we can, and pass these savings back either through future precepts or the use of reserves to fund new or renovated public assets. If you need any further details or have any questions at all about the finances of your Community Council, please contact me at your convenience through any of the means listed on the contacts page on this site.
David Hinchliffe
Clerk, Minera CC