Dear Editor,

Your readers may have heard about a County Council Cabinet decision on December 3rd to effectively steal £23,386 from the people of Ross-on-Wye.

The Precept Support Grant is paid by central Government to compensate Parish Councils for reducing their Council Tax base in previous years.

Unfortunately the Government has passed this sum through Herefordshire Council without ring fencing it in law.

In previous years, the County Council has passed on this money to Parishes. This year the Cabinet has decided, in its desperate scramble for more money, to pick the pockets of Parish Councils. Your readers may share my revulsion at the morality of taking someone else’s money, just because you can, in law.

The County Council have added insult to injury by phasing in this legalised theft for all the other Market Towns in the County – but not for Ross.

Ross has already taken on more assets from the County than any other Parish. We are saving them more than £50,000 on the annual running costs of the Market House, thousands on the Old Chapel, tens of thousands on the Town’s lavatories, £30,000 odd on the maintenance of the riverside. They still bleat on their website about how they will be “changing our approach to one that.. supports town and parish councils and communities to deliver more services.”

What sanctimonious hogwash.

I urge your readers to rise up and demand that the county gives us our money back. Contact your county councillors and MP and keep contacting them. They never promised this robbery at the elections back in May.

Chris Bartrum,

Ross