We have a long held belief in East Cambs that taxation should be the last port of call.

I believe that increasing local taxes without doing every single thing possible to avoid it is too easy and wrong.

It is important to say that this cannot be at the expense of running high quality services.

Ely Standard: Anna Bailey is the leader of East Cambs District Council.Anna Bailey is the leader of East Cambs District Council. (Image: NEWSQUEST)

I haven’t shied away from the fact that we had issues with our waste collection service last year arising from the round reconfiguration and followed by really serious sickness issues.

We have worked hard to overcome the problems and made significant investment into the service which is recovering.

Last week the Lib Dem, Labour, Independent coalition at Cambridgeshire County Council decided to increase its share of Council Tax by 4.99 per cent.

Cambridgeshire Lib Dems and Labour also supported a decision to bring in a new Mayoral precept, costing Band D households £12 a year.

East Cambs is unusual in having a balanced budget for the next two years, £0 external borrowing, and a healthy 10 per cent of our operating budget in General Reserves.

We will be the only district or upper tier authority in the country to have frozen council tax for 10 years.

Ours is a small council; nevertheless we have recently committed £2.3m to nine community projects on top of more than £10m already invested in other community infrastructure and £3.8m given to parish councils.

We also continue with free parking in the council’s town and city centre car parks.

In 2016, we set up East Cambs Trading Company, which is 100 per cent owned by the Council and runs the much loved Ely Markets, the Parks & Open Spaces Team and Palace Green Homes which builds new and affordable homes.

The Company has benefited the Council by over £3.6m to date.

To put that into context, raising the East Cambs element of Council Tax by one per cent brings in about £45,000.