The next Midsomer Norton Town Council Full Council meeting will not be until Februrary 2023, with concerns from residents who may not get a full chance to discuss how much the Precept will be.

That is the amount set by the TC for its budget and will then be included in next year's Council Tax bill for all households. At an earlier meeting it was made public that the council could be considering substantially increasing the budget to cover shortfalls, and this could amount to an 80% increase in the precept, although as was also pointed out at that meeting, this could amount to just £10 on everyone's bill.

Meantime a hoped-for public consultation will not happen, instead the finances of Midsomer Norton will be discussed in a specially co-opted Working Party which will meet in January.

Concerns about the state of the town's finances have been raised after it was revealed that there are plans to cut many of the community events next year,

At the last meeting of Midsomer Norton Town Council on December 5 when councillors were warned not to rush into any decision on cuts. With events all frozen the probable only avenue left to keep costs down would be staffing.

Alex Davis Trust Manager from Midsomer Norton Town Trust told councillors : " I don't want you to be spooked into rushing into freezes, rushing into cuts when you've got time to do proper consultation. There's good arguments on both sides. I'd like to put the cases forward for some for some things and I think there's some services we can probably fund in other routes to take the burden off the Town Council. "

He earlier said: "  £10 extra to make sure you provide clean spaces, youth work. Keep the High Street available and affordable... to make sure there's comprehensive youth provision. Think of the Town Warden, which is really important I think. We've got to analyse all these things, really closely, I don't think its something that should just be chucked out today. "

Cllr Sean Hughes of B&NES told Nub News: " Regarding the Midsomer Norton precept tax increase

"Every year the residents pay as part of our council tax a precept to our Town Council, The B&NES Council tax is restricted by law and this year will increase by 1.99% (and 2% for Adult Social Care), there are no such restrictions on Parish and Town Councils who are free to increase the precept local tax by any amount.

 In April this year the Town Council agreed a forward plan for increasing the precept from the current £431k to £449k over a 4 year period. However in November their proposal is now to completely ignore their financial plan and increase to £464k in the next financial year. Such a large increase requires detail of how this figure was decided, hopefully not to buy more concrete table tennis tables? Previous questions regarding finance received the response "how long is a piece of string?" perhaps now we know?

 Certainly, something as important as the draft budget should be presented clearly to the public for scrutiny purely in the interest of public confidence.

I was pleased to hear from Cllr Steve Plumley that he felt that more work was needed and that the working party for the budget agreed to continue to review further and engage with stakeholders such as community groups who depend on contributions to provide much needed services. I look forward to the draft budget presentation in the new year. "