COUNCIL tax in Oxfordshire may go up by more than originally planned after the Government laid out its plans for local authority income.

The Department for Communities and Local Government said the threshold at which councils could increase the tax without triggering a referendum would remain at 1.99 per cent. Some councils had expected it to be lowered to 0.99 per cent.

As a result, Oxfordshire County Council said that if upping council tax was something it did, then it would reduce strain on the council budget.

County council spokesman Paul Smith said: “We had assumed that the referendum limit for council tax rises would be one per cent when in fact it will be two per cent. Should a decision be taken in due course to propose a 1.99 per cent council tax rise, this would mean that the pressures on the council’s budgets would be lessened by £3.196m.”

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Oxfordshire County Council’s grant from the Government is to fall by £18.47m next year, the figures have also shown. On Thursday the DCLG said the authority’s revenue support grant would fall from £145.61m to £127.14m for 2015/2016.

But it claimed the council would have more money from Government to spend overall – a total £478.7m, 1.2 per cent up on the current £473m.

Mr Smith said the Government’s figures included £33m of cash the authority did not actually receive, such as the NHS Better Care Fund.

He said: “This measure is therefore not reflective of the council’s actual financial position. The council’s finance experts are currently analysing the detail of the Government’s announcement. At the moment it appears that the grant cuts are broadly in line with expectations.”

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