THE fact that council tax for the coming year has been increased by only five per cent over existing levels will, I am sure, gratify many members of the local community.

However, it disguises losses for the community, who are receiving less breadth of services than those which even government believes them entitled to receive.

Past reluctance to advance levels of council tax, even at the rate of inflation, has left Kennet District Council spending significantly less than the government expects them to. Despite this, the trivial allowances from central government, allied with threats of capping, have required the council to save £2 million in the last two years. Unless, and in the unlikely event that central government is prepared to pay grants to Kennet

District Council at the same level of intervention with which it favours Labour-leaning urban councils, local residents will remain deprived of adequate stocks of affordable homes, barely adequate leisure and amenity services and other discretionary services on which the council has been obliged to suspend or reduce its discretionary expenditure.

In patting themselves on the back that, typically, only an extra 10p per week is payable, residents may care to ponder the gradually reducing profile or increasing costs of their, often, taken-for-granted services.

N Carter

Great Western Close

Devizes