YOU HAVE probably just received an unwelcome letter in the post or it might have dropped into your inbox.

Council Tax is a cross most of us have to bear but how many of us have actually looked at where our hard earned cash is going.

MARY NAYLOR reports.

THE letter drops to the doormat and is opened with a sigh. The local government wants yet another four-figure sum from you.

The letter sits on the table and the payments are paid throughout the year but where does that money go and what benefit do we get?

The Tax Payers Alliance supports tax reform and British taxpayers.

Chief executive John O’Connell said knowing where their money goes benefits the public.

Mr O’Connell said: “It’s vital that taxpayers know as much as possible about how their hard-earned cash is spent.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so if Bolton, and indeed all councils, were to introduce much more transparency, we’d all stand to benefit.”

The council reckons it will have £113,109,000 of council tax money to spend this financial year on running costs and services.

Band A properties ­— the lowest of the eight council tax bands ­— make up 40 per cent of the homes in Bolton and households living in them pay £1,174.47 a year in council tax.

Council tax bands were set in 1991 and are based on property valuations at the time. Band As were valued at up to £40,000, the highest, Band H were valued at more than £320,000.

For Band A households the biggest sum from their bill, £407.40 ­— almost 35 per cent ­— goes to funding the council’s adult services and public health services.

This is services like residential care and care at home for the elderly. Direct payments to people arranging their own care are also paid from this money.

Children’s services make up the second largest part of council tax (17 per cent) with £201.37 of Band A payments going to support services like fostering and adoption placements.

Bin collection is probably the most obvious and ubiquitous council service and is funded at two levels from council tax.

A waste, transport and land drainage levy costing Band A homes £165.06 (13 per cent) funds waste disposal by Greater Manchester and £82.26 for environmental services (seven per cent) lets the council physically collect the bins and recycling.

Money for environmental services also goes to maintain parks and cemeteries, managing libraries and museums as well as going towards the upkeep of the roads.

Households in Blackrod, Horwich and Westhoughton have an additional precept to the rest of the borough, a parish precept. An estimated £402,140 will be collected from the parish precepts.

The third largest contribution from council tax goes to fund Greater Manchester services as a whole in the form of two mayoral precepts.

The first of these (£132.20) goes to the police and crime commissioner function of the Greater Manchester Mayor’s office.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority expects to get £148,765,398 from the police precept which it says will cover less than 20 per cent of Greater Manchester Police’s budget.

The precept was raised 13.8 per cent this year in a bid to get an extra £18 million from the public purse, it says this will fund an additional 320 police officers (currently 6,250) and improving the 101 call service.

The second mayoral precept (£51.30) is expected to raise £57,728,000 with around 78 per cent of this money going to Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service and the remainder going to fund the Mayors office and his various functions, including grants to councils and administering the bus service operators grant (formerly the fuel duty rebate).

The fire services is currently looking at changing the way it works after the Manchester Arena attack and subsequent Kerslake Report.

These changes are being consulted on at the moment and in Bolton could see Bolton Central and Bolton North fire stations merged, a new modern fire station built and the number of engines reduced from three to two.