Council tax increase - maths boffin needed

[markemark]

The latest council tax bill is in, and there's a breakdown into 4 line items:
1) The Country Council bill - increased by 3%
2) The adult social care precept - increased by 2%
3) Police - increased by 4.2%
4) The district council bill - increased by 3%
Total: - increased by 4.7%

Am I being a maths dunce, or am I right that 4.7% is impossible? To my mind, it shouldn't be larger than any of the contstituent increases.
It's doing my head-in!!!! Especially after 3 years of engineer maths at Uni!

Answers on a post-card please, or I'll be creating a spreadsheet later to work it all out for myself.

4 options.

1. That is not a breakdown but only some of the parts.
2. They are being dishonest.
3. Their maths is wrong.
4. You have missed or misread something.

As you say, if that is a full breakdown, then the overall percentage is between 0 and the maximum listed % (4.2) depending on the ratios

 

[presta]

I haven't had this year's bill yet, but:

For a Band C house.

 

[Fastpedaller]

Ours is similar for Norfolk. Shows total change 4.7%. I've dug out last year's bill and Adult Social Care Precept has gone up by 16% compared to the 2.0 % quoted. No wonder the Councils are in problems, basic maths eludes them!

 

[T4tomo]

yeah checked mine last night, the maths is all wrong too.

 

[presta]

This was news to me:
https://www.braintree.gov.uk/council-tax/25-new-homes-growth-dividend

 

[Fastpedaller]

This was news to me:
https://www.braintree.gov.uk/council-tax/25-new-homes-growth-dividend

I only 'skim read' it, but there doesn't seem to be an explanation why this is being given....... reading between the lines (of the title) I guess the council have a lot more income due to expansion, therefore they have decided to give some back to those who've been paying previously. Makes me wonder if you're in an area with a small population, do you end up paying a lot more than the 'average'?

 

[lazybloke]

I was right, their maths was wrong.
Nothing was missing, they just screwed up the calc for the overall increase, which as correctly identified by @presta was slightly over 3% - thank you.

 

[Electric_Andy]

I had a similar boggle with a report I was doing for work. We had 7 sets of numbers, each representing a hospital and the percentage of returns (with higher being better). I thought I could get the % returns from each hospital and then work out an average for the region, but I was wrong.

I then visited a percentage calculator website where there was an explanation. If you go from 60% down to 50% then you haven't dropped 10% (as all my senior managers seemed to think). You have droped 18.18%. Because % difference = 100 x ((A - B)/(A + B) / 2) or something like that, I may have brackets in wrong place.... I ended up putting in the actual values into Excel and doing the function, then setting results to display %. I can quite believe how councils and come to that a lot of other institutions where workers like me are asked to produce stats when they have no maths/statistics qualifications beyond GCSE. The results look right when you look at them, and if you haven't the time to look into thousands of rows of data then it can get missed by the untrained eye

 

[presta]

I only 'skim read' it, but there doesn't seem to be an explanation why this is being given....... reading between the lines (of the title) I guess the council have a lot more income due to expansion, therefore they have decided to give some back to those who've been paying previously. Makes me wonder if you're in an area with a small population, do you end up paying a lot more than the 'average'?

I suppose sparsely populated areas must tend to be more expensive to administer per capita, I don't know whether governments grants cover it.

 

[Fastpedaller]

yeah checked mine last night, the maths is all wrong too.

Is it all wrong? Comparing my new bill to last year (Norfolk) states a correct percentage increase for the total, but one item (Adult Social Care Precept) has increased by 16%, but the Council state it as a 2% increase. All the parts add to the totals, it's just the one item shown incorrectly.
Not that I'm excusing them - they should spot these errors before publishing, and it begs the question of whether they really know their job.

 

[Fastpedaller]

I had a similar boggle with a report I was doing for work. We had 7 sets of numbers, each representing a hospital and the percentage of returns (with higher being better). I thought I could get the % returns from each hospital and then work out an average for the region, but I was wrong.

I then visited a percentage calculator website where there was an explanation. If you go from 60% down to 50% then you haven't dropped 10% (as all my senior managers seemed to think). You have droped 18.18%. Because % difference = 100 x ((A - B)/(A + B) / 2) or something like that, I may have brackets in wrong place.... I ended up putting in the actual values into Excel and doing the function, then setting results to display %. I can quite believe how councils and come to that a lot of other institutions where workers like me are asked to produce stats when they have no maths/statistics qualifications beyond GCSE. The results look right when you look at them, and if you haven't the time to look into thousands of rows of data then it can get missed by the untrained eye

It doesn't take a 'specially trained eye' to spot an increase from (in the case of Norfolk Adult Social care) £175 to £203 ISN'T 2%

 

[teeonethousand]

The bumf that came with ours explained that the social care precept is set at 2% LEVY based on the last year ave council tax+precept. It is not a rise of 2 on the precept but a charge on a bigger number that includes average tax. No wonder it's confusing.

 

[presta]

And again with this year's bill:

Is it all wrong? Comparing my new bill to last year (Norfolk) states a correct percentage increase for the total, but one item (Adult Social Care Precept) has increased by 16%, but the Council state it as a 2% increase. All the parts add to the totals, it's just the one item shown incorrectly.
Not that I'm excusing them - they should spot these errors before publishing, and it begs the question of whether they really know their job.

If multiple councils are making the same error for more than one year it doesn't sound like an accident.

 

[Fastpedaller]

As Teeonethousand stated above it certainly is confusing. Our bill has a asterisk against Adult Social Care Precept and in no. 2 size font the explanation is "The Council tax attributable to Norfolk County Council includes a precept to fund adult social care"
Whatever that means. I would say presenting a bill showing a % increase of 2 when the customer's bill for that item is increasing by 16% is misleading. It seems to be the same for many Councils (not just local to me) so I can only think this isn't set by the local Council, but comes from central government. I'll put the tinfoil hat on.
ETA I've no problem with increasing funding to Adult Social Care if it needs to happen - Do we as a society get value-for-money where any of this spend takes place, or do the accounts 'just add up'?

 

[presta]

ETA I've no problem with increasing funding to Adult Social Care if it needs to happen

That's the point, isn't it. It all just looks like more of this pretending that people can have their cake and eat it. Social care in particular has been a growing problem for years, but it just gets swept under the carpet.

I've emailed the council, so we'll see what they say.