This evening Surrey Heath Borough Council will hold an extraordinary council meeting. It’s being held to approve the reduction in Council Tax, equivalent to 6 pence per week for a band D property, resulting from Surrey Police’s precept being rate capped by the Government.

Other councils in Surrey have complainedabout the idiocy of the need for the change. While it’s possible to argue that Surrey Police were cavalier in testing the resolve of government not to rate cap excessive rate rises, it’s understandable in that Surrey Police suffer from chronic underfunding of their service.

However, there was surely a more effective way of raising awareness of the underfunding, rather than playing ‘Russian roulette’ with government.

You’d have thought that the obvious solution to the problem would be to subtract the reduction from next years police budget. Fine, but then local taxpayers would be paying too much in the current year, and could have reasonably argued for a rebate. Result very messy administratively.

My view, Surrey Police wrong to ignore government guidelines, government absolutely right to rate cap, government totally wrong to underfund the Surrey Police.

UPDATE:  Thursday morning

My view was, generally, the one most agreed with last night.