Householders in county to face rates rise of over 1%

Sarah Saunderson • Published 4 Feb 2011 09:00 0 Comments

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The District Rate for Fermanagh householders is expected to rise by 1.2 per cent in April.

Next Monday night Fermanagh District Council is due to meet and is anticipated to ratify the increase.

Rates bills are made up of two parts -- the District Rate which is set by the Council -- and the Regional Rate which is set by the Executive. The last two years the Regional Rate has been frozen. However, it will not be until after all 26 District Councils have agreed their rates bills that the Executive will show its hand.

The current domestic rate for 2010/11 is 0.6056 and 48.4310 for non-domestic properties.

Currently Fermanagh District Council has the second lowest non-domestic rate in Northern Ireland and the third lowest domestic rate.

Fermanagh District Council Chairman Councillor Stephen Huggett said that it was expected that there would be a “small increase” in the rates.

“The only reason we have an increase is that we have lost a lot of the rate grant from the Government because of changes in calculations for the Resources Grant. The Regional Rate is going up more than the District Rate,” he said.

“We are reasonably happy with the outcome. It gives us room to see where we sit for the next year,” he said.

He said “people should not notice too much difference” in the level of the Council’s capital spend next year. The big drain on resources is waste management. “We have some quite large expenditure that is still going ahead,” he said.

“The new Investment Co-operation and Efficiency Programme (ICE) which all Councillors have to do for the Government, Mr. Poots [Environment Minister] is very keen on this. When you have already cut to the bone it is very difficult to cut any more. That is one of the problems,” Councillor Huggett added.

This article appeared in Impartial Reporter 03 Feb 11

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