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Council Tax

The introduction of a notional budget, which is a change from the previous rather inflexible system, means that the Government, rather than using a straight, crude capping system, have been able to allow a budget to be set, which is what happened with Surrey last year. It was made quite clear to the authority that in calculating this year's budget the Government would agree to it on the assumption of the budget that would have been set if the Government had not made an exception for Surrey last year. Today, we are taking this action because last year we allowed Surrey to have a notional budget, but it was always clear that when we considered what would be allowed this year we would return to that figure.