Tax freeze agreed (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Tax freeze agreed

A FREEZE for the coming year on the city tax levied on people living in Salisbury was agreed by members of the city area committee last week.

The status quo was put forward by the district council's Labour leader, Steve Fear, and is for the city precept element of the council tax bill.

Explaining the freeze, committee chairman Simon Howarth said that for the past four years the city had been increasing its reserves in order to finance a new cemetery but the committee was now cautiously optimistic that two possible cemetery sites had been identified and could be financed for less than had been anticipated.

He said: "The reason for the reduction in cost is that the new cemetery would be either on church-owned land in Laverstock or on council-owned land, and the council would not therefore have to meet the cost of purchasing a site outright.

"We shall not know whether our preferred options for the new cemetery will be approved until around June of this year.

"But if they are, we shall be able to finance a cemetery at one of the sites from the funds we have built up."

He said that if one or both of the preferred options were approved, there was a good chance that it would be possible to hold increases in the city precept to below-inflation levels for the next couple of years.

Salisbury's Devizes Road cemetery is now full and the London Road cemetery will be full within the next two to three years.

The two possible sites, adjacent to St Andrew's Church and at Cow Lane, in Laverstock, are awaiting approval by the Environment Agency and are subject to planning applications.