Was inflation negative in recent months?

Albermarle

hugheskevi said:

lib21by said:

Sorry, but the measure of inflation that I sits in the front of my mind are the increases in costs that I cannot escape from [ many others I deal with by doing without ]

And top of the list of the inescapable are the standing charges for energy.

March 2023 to March 2024, the increases are - gas 4% and electricity 28%

And from April 2023 to April 2024 they will be - gas 9.5% and electricity 8%

Looking back at my inescapable costs, the average p/a percentage change from April 2020 to April 2024 are below.

Water: 10.2%
Gas/electric: 13.8%
Council Tax: 7.3% (in a Local Authority permitted to increase bills above 5%)
Broadband (incl landline): 7.1%
House insurance: 6.6%
2 * Mobile phone contract (not including phones): -12.9% (price reduction)

Over the period, CPI (all items) increased by 5.2% p/a
Across all the categories above, the increase was 9.6% p/a

Although the cost of gas/electric is the highest increase, it is still only £3.97 per day. For all my heating and electric I still consider it a great deal. I place water in the same category. In these days of having apps showing the daily cost of utilities, I'm probably more inclined to use gas/electric due to having that information readily available, as the cost of it is so low in comparison even to basic things like a take-out coffee or a bottle of soft drink.

Broadband is not a like-for-like comparison as the speed of my current contract is much higher. Mobile phone data allowance is higher, so that is also a superior product. So telecommunications has been the best-performing area of expenditure on inescapable costs.

In comparison, Council Tax has 'only' increased by 7.3% p/a over the period, but the service provided has deteriorated and I benefit from only a fraction of what I have to pay for it (about 16%). That is the inescapable cost that gets most of my attention, due to resenting the shocking value it provides, the size of it in relation to other inescapable costs, and having no way to avoid it.

Due to family situation we get a 'good deal' from our council tax as a lot of expensive social care is provided, but I would be happier if we did not have to take advantage of that.

hugheskevi

Albermarle said:

hugheskevi said:

lib21by said:

Sorry, but the measure of inflation that I sits in the front of my mind are the increases in costs that I cannot escape from [ many others I deal with by doing without ]

And top of the list of the inescapable are the standing charges for energy.

March 2023 to March 2024, the increases are - gas 4% and electricity 28%

And from April 2023 to April 2024 they will be - gas 9.5% and electricity 8%

Looking back at my inescapable costs, the average p/a percentage change from April 2020 to April 2024 are below.

Water: 10.2%
Gas/electric: 13.8%
Council Tax: 7.3% (in a Local Authority permitted to increase bills above 5%)
Broadband (incl landline): 7.1%
House insurance: 6.6%
2 * Mobile phone contract (not including phones): -12.9% (price reduction)

Over the period, CPI (all items) increased by 5.2% p/a
Across all the categories above, the increase was 9.6% p/a

Although the cost of gas/electric is the highest increase, it is still only £3.97 per day. For all my heating and electric I still consider it a great deal. I place water in the same category. In these days of having apps showing the daily cost of utilities, I'm probably more inclined to use gas/electric due to having that information readily available, as the cost of it is so low in comparison even to basic things like a take-out coffee or a bottle of soft drink.

Broadband is not a like-for-like comparison as the speed of my current contract is much higher. Mobile phone data allowance is higher, so that is also a superior product. So telecommunications has been the best-performing area of expenditure on inescapable costs.

In comparison, Council Tax has 'only' increased by 7.3% p/a over the period, but the service provided has deteriorated and I benefit from only a fraction of what I have to pay for it (about 16%). That is the inescapable cost that gets most of my attention, due to resenting the shocking value it provides, the size of it in relation to other inescapable costs, and having no way to avoid it.

Due to family situation we get a 'good deal' from our council tax as a lot of expensive social care is provided, but I would be happier if we did not have to take advantage of that.

In principle I support local taxes, and I'd be happy to pay them if our council prioritised the basics - keeping streets clean, repairing potholes, keeping parks clean and tidy, providing litter bins, public toilets, having bus shelters. All of those have not been the case for years in our Local Authority. Even the IT services are terrible, so although in theory you can do everything online, in practice, you end up waiting forever on telephone lines to do things that should be completed online as not all the common options have been programmed correctly (and then get told to select inaccurate options, and these have been known issues for some time).

Then some things used to be free at point of use, eg garden waste collections and bulky waste collection which are now charged for services.

And finally, there is draconian CCTV enforcement of anything for which a fine can be levied whilst ignoring anything which has far more detrimental impacts on the local area but which is more difficult to enforce and wouldn't raise revenue.

So although the headline increase in our Council Tax over the last 4 years has been 7.3% p/a (well above inflation), the actual cost increase is higher due to increased charges outside the headline rate and the benefits fewer.

All of these things which I did benefit from have been deprioritised to the point of being non-functional despite only taking a small share of the budget. Every year we are told the priorities are vulnerable children and elderly to justify the failure of core council services. 

When services are as pathetic as that, it is difficult not to resent above inflation increases year after year to pay for ever declining services.

af1963

... happy to pay them if our council prioritised the basics - keeping streets clean, repairing potholes, keeping parks clean and tidy, providing litter bins, public toilets, having bus shelters. 

None of these are major parts of "the basics" that councils provide.  Your council is now mostly a social care service, and it has statutory legal responsibilities to meet before it can spend anything on the legally optional things you mention. Even non-statutory social care spending takes lower priority. 

 It also means the "well above inflation" comparison is not valid if you're comparing it with general consumer price indexes - the only costs that matter are the costs of meeting rising demand for social care to an increasingly elderly population. The key factors are demographics/demand, and increasing minimum wage and energy costs.

In England: councils spent 57% on social care in 2016 :(document below:  I expect the percentage needed for social care is now even higher.)

https://www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/A4 STATIC IMAGE_04_1.pdf

In Scotland (and maybe also Wales ?), education is also funded at council level and is the other big cost.