Ask not what your Town Council does for you.

I was very surprised to find how difficult it is to discover where Tenbury Town Council spends our money.

Tenbury Town Council set the 2nd highest precept in the Malvern Hills District. For an (average) band D property, the Town Council levy a charge of £76.91, which seems quite good value until you discover that the charge for Malvern Hills District Council is only £125.40.

From Malvern Hills we get, Planning Control, Licensing, Part of the Worcestershire Hub, Street cleaning, Some grass cutting, Environmental Health, Toilets Provision, Elections, Tourism Support, Standards Committee, Car Parking, Summer Activities, Community Safety, Waste Collection and Recycling, Emergency Planning, Lobbying, and awarding of Grants, amongst other things.

What do we get from Tenbury Town Council?

They clean and maintain the bus shelter outside the Regal.

They run their own web-site, which was supposed to be income generating, but isn't, and they do not even use it to publish all their public documents, with many document only appearing on their noticeboard.

They own and control the Regal, should this (with the help of grant aid) be self sufficient and not be a burden on the tax payer?

They now own the Pump Rooms, but again should this be self sufficient? There appears to be no Management Plan for the Pump Rooms and the Town Council have publicly admitted that they have no idea how much it is going to cost to run and maintain.

They own two shops, surely these at least should be revenue generating not cost items.

They own and run the Burgage and Palmers Meadow. Once again, there is income to off-set expenditure, but in the Malvern Town Council area, similar open spaces are maintained by the District Council, so why does so much cost fall upon our local precept?

One plus point is that they do provide free car parking.

The purpose of a Town Council is to raise a precept and provide services and facilities for the public. Perhaps we cannot expect these services and facilities to be run on a commercial basis to make a profit or to break even, but at what point does the cost of a facility used by a small minority become unacceptable. For instance when does the public subsidy of a game of Tennis become too much? 50p? £5? £50?

Due to the way public records are kept and published it is almost impossible to say how much the Town Council subsidise each game of Tennis or each Game of Bowls, but we can see that the income from all the Sports and Recreation facilities (plus the Cemetery) is in the region of £6,000, where as the expenditure is nearing £22,000. The income from the Bowling appears to be in the region of £1,000, but the cost of the Green Maintenance alone is in excess of £3,000.

In the last year that figures were available, 50% of the money raised through the precept was spent on wages.

The Town Council are our elected representatives, but we should all take an interest in what they do. After all we pay for it.