At the Hadleigh Town Council meeting on Thursday 19th May a Hadleigh resident reminded Councillors that Hadleigh holds the unenviable record of having increased the Council Tax by a record 18.9% over the last two years.

These facts are on the Babergh District Council's schedule of the "Precepts and Council Tax Band D for Parishes". It shows that the Hadleigh Council Tax was increased by more than that paid by Stowmarket and Sudbury residents by 10% and 14%.

This exceptional increase was attributed to the disastrous decision by a "Cabal" of the "Old" Town Council.

They borrowed £500,000 from the Public Works Loan Board to extend the Cemetery with no realistic income to support the interest and repayment terms.

The repayment continues to drain the finances of the Town Council and will continue to do so for the next 20 years. What is sad, the resident said, is that with a bit of enterprise, the Cemetery extension could actually generate income to repay the loan earlier.

He gave his ideas to the chair of the Cemetery Working Group but these were ignored. Then, the working group was unexpectedly closed down and the HTC officers took over the total running of the Cemetery.

No independent professional assessment of the need for the Cemetery extension was ever made.

Call to reinstate Cemetery Working Group

The Hadleigh resident asked the re-elected Mayor, Gordon McLeod, to re-instated the Cemetery Working Group with a new Chair and public representation.

In the last financial year the Council budgeted £25,000 for the total income for the Cemetery. The actual outcome, not yet confirmed by the Internal Financial Verifier, is expected to be less than £15,000. This is an unacceptable error of over 40%, the resident said.

The £9,000 predicted income from the Cemetery extension alone turned out to be ZERO.

This has nothing to do with Covid whose impact was known at the time of budgeting. It is forecasting errors made by HTC staff.

The Cemetery income assumption for this year is £28,480. It is a fact, as Cllr. Knock has often pointed out to Council, that the total annual Cemetery income has never ever exceeded £20,000. This year's forecast income is again nonsense, as was last year's, the resident said. He went on, if the proposals for the Cemetery extension, are not modified or abandoned then Hadleigh Council Tax payers will have to continue to effectively bail out a bankrupt Council whose officers are totally inept at managing the finances.

The same might apply to the pavilion and artificial grass pitches for the Layham Road Sports facilities that are under consideration.

"completely useless"

He went on to say, that he had no idea to which co-worker the Town Clerk was referring in her blog, when quoting one of them as being "completely useless", but she may well have a point on whoever produced the financial budgets for the Cemetery and Layham Road Sports facilities.

The Hadleigh resident requested that Councillors reinstate the Cemetery Working Group, under a different chair, and to listen to the creative ideas from all those interested in reducing Hadleigh's Council Tax for next year.

He ended with a request to reduce Council expenditure for all Hadleigh's Council Tax payers and residents.

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