According to the Office for National Statistics, inflation is running at 2.2%. Clearly no-one told South Norfolk District Council about this as our new council tax demand is up 4.0% on last year.

Talking of last year, do you remember how last year Norfolk Police Authority couldn’t keep to any sort of budgeting and raised their bill by 6.9%?

Well this year, they’ve surpassed themselves and increased it by 8.3%! Clearly proper business governance is anathema to Norfolk Police Authority/Norfolk Constabulary. They say:

“Budget Issues
Norfolk Constabulary has suffered from successive years of under-funding by Government to the point where we regularly had to dip into our reserves. We can no longer afford to keep doing that.”

Erm, isn’t that what reserves are for? And yes, we know you claim to have suffered in previous years: you’ve been more than happy to share your pain with us by never living within inflation-matching rises and instead passing it on to us.

Oh and they also say that they are “Performing Well”:

“…our detection rate rose to 32% – the highest we have ever achieved…”

Which means they didn’t detect 68% of reported crime. Still, as long as they detect those heinous speeding motorists on the main trunk roads, eh… Yes, they’ve decided to increase transport costs from £3.33M to £4.03M this year, that’s a 21% increase!

Then when you look at South Norfolk Council’s budget, it’s good to see that they intend spending over £28M (out of £50M) on “Finance, Staffing and Property, including Revenues & Benefits, Human Resources, IT Services”. That’s not housing by the way. Nice little earner and a cushy job if you can get it.

So I rang 0845 7555555 again and went through thus usual palaver of them not being able to find the account on their system before I was transferred to a supervisor. I asked her for the direct dial telephone number before she transferred me through, which she gave me before … cutting me off!

I rang the number she had give me which was, of course, the wrong one. I managed to get yet another number from this department to ring which was 01202 648773 and I rang them.

No apparent notes on their system. After a few minutes, the woman took all my details, gave me a case reference and said that someone would call me back within 48 hours and hopefully find out what had happened to those cheques.

I asked why my account had not already been credited with the money given that they had acknowledged receipt of the cheques and that it was clearly their problem and not mine if they chose to lose them. She said she would put a note to that effect on the case notes…