Council rates increase sees £18 added to annual household bills

FERMANAGH and Omagh District Council has approved a 3.76 per-cent rise in domestic and non-domestic rates – adding around £18 to annual household bills.

The increase was passed by a comfortable majority despite opposition from the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which had proposed a lower rate rise.

UUP councillor Victor Warrington argued that the council should ‘minimise the impact on local ratepayers’ and believed a rise of less than three per-cent was achievable.

However, Sinn Féin’s Stephen McCann dismissed the proposal as ‘opportunistic and populist’, noting that Fermanagh and Omagh would still have one of the lowest rates in Northern Ireland.

“This rise is in light of a very ambitious capital spend, including a new capital programme of £5 million over five years for community capital grants,” he said.

“It is important that we don’t ignore the impact of the British Government imposition of National Insurance payments on staff and wages. I am also aware that tonight the UUP has proposed rates rises of 3.99 per-cent in Lisburn and Castlereagh. That is higher than what we are bringing forward tonight and this is the culmination of a process which has gone on for months.

“We are not going to play games and be opportunistic and populist.”

There was also debate on an SDLP proposal that reserves should be set at a rate of eight per cent of the council’s expected net expenditure, but this was also defeated.

Chief executive, Alison McCullagh, said that the rates process had taken into account issues such as a potential rise in the allowance for councillors.

She added that the council’s medium-reserve figure of some £4 million provided security for proposed projects over the next few years, and that a likely HMRC refund payment had been incorporated into the council’s estimates for the next 12 months.