COUNCIL RIDDLE GOES UNSOLVED

CRUMBRIA: 12/04/2025

THE quality of Council news served up by our local “newspapers” sometimes has to be seen to be disbelieved.

Tonight, tame Council parrot the News & Shrug, Carlisle, squawked out another puzzler.

The article had more holes in it than the world’s largest golf course.

The “newspaper” made a feeble stab at explaining a National Insurance row between the depleted Tory ranks on Crumberland Council and its Labour-daft leadership.

Spoiler alert: (The paper appears to have largely gulped down everything they were told by the Red side with no follow-up questions required of the two main protaganists.)

Standard N&S fodder, then!

The article hinted at but never fully explained the impact on Crumberland Council of the Government’s decision to hike National Insurance Contributions paid by employers.

Rachel Reeves’ fantastic idea to hike employer NICs from 13.8% to 15% was always going to kick Councils hard in the budgets – given that Crumberland alone directly employs around 4,500 staff.

The Local Government Association said this had left Councils nationwide facing a £637m NIC bombshell for staff alone.

Further, the LGA warned that Councils would ALSO have to grapple with £1.1BN of additional NIC-related costs.

Council contractors, of which there are many, also have to pay higher NIC contributions.

To offset this, the contractors are hiking the fees they charge to Councils to cover these new costs.

In effect, it means private sector firms are taking public money from local councils to give back to the Taxwoman.

How’s that for Government maths genius?

To prevent a Town Hall backlash, the Government conjured up a £515 million pot – called a NIC Compensation scheme – for Councils to claim help for the increased NICs they will have to pay for Council staff.

Half a billion doesn’t touch the sides.

Remember Councils have copped it for £637m, according to the LGA.

From the new pot, Crumberland expects to require £2.2 million every year for four years = £6.6m.

But even this £2.2m a year in help won’t completely cover Crumberland’s higher rate of NIC contributions for staff.

It said so explicitly in February: “Local Councils will not be fully compensated for the pressure associated with the increased NICs from April 2025.”

Nor can the Government pot be used by Crumberland to settle the extra NIC obligations for contracts.

In this year alone, Crumberland expects to spend an extra £2.3M on NIC for its external contractors.

Where will it get that money from?

So try, if you will, to make sense of the newspaper article we mentioned earlier (full link below).

Wetheral Tory megathon Councillor Ellis may be off the mark with his claim that NIC will cost the Council £6m but he’s probably not too far away.

And the Council’s glorious Labour leader, Cllr Fryer, must be seriously underplaying it by telling pet hacks on the paper that the Council’s new NIC bill is as low as “about £1.9m“.

Both Councillors can’t be right.

Yet the paper didn’t spot the inconsistencies it had introduced or purposely chose not to resolve them.

So basically the National Insurance riddle continues and all you baffled readers of the N&S can swivel!

Read the story: Cumberland Council Leader responds to claim by Wetheral councillor

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