I UNDERSTAND from the article in last week’s paper that the  Conservative administration in Coleford are considering raising Council Tax.

One per cent may not be a lot to Cllr Molyneux  and the other Tory toffs but for a lot of the people that I represent this is just one extra bill they will struggle to pay.

Therefore, the UKIP group on the Forest of Dean District  Council will be opposing this increase.

In order to plug any financial ‘black hole’ we would look to reduce the amount of money that is currently spent on discretionary services.

Discretionary services are those that the council chooses to finance as opposed to statutory services that they have, by law,  to provide.

At present these constitute some £2.5 million out of a total budget of £10.5 million.

Let us examine just how many of these are really needed by the community before we ask the working poor to pay more.