Crunch Vote Dodged: Labour Delays Council Tax Decision Amid Funding Gamble..

BUDGET DAY SHOWDOWN ENDS IN DEFERRAL AS LABOUR 'CHICKENS OUT' & PLAYS FOR TIME

Council Tax Call 'Kicked into the Long Grass', as Billing Deadline Looms.

20th Feb 2026

Hartlepool Borough Council was plunged ever deeper into financial and political uncertainty yesterday evening, after Labour councillors opted to defer a decisive vote on council tax, a move critics say risks administrative turmoil and prolongs the councils ever increasing budget crisis.

Supporters of the Labour Leader Pamela Brash claim she was 'showing leadership', her critics claim she's kicking the can, waiting for a bailout that will never arrive.

The crunch meeting had been expected to settle how the council would close a widening funding gap caused by what the council claims is pressures in the Childrens Services Sector. Instead, councillors were urged by council leader Cllr Pamela Hargreaves to reject any increase in core council tax and unite behind a renewed campaign to force additional money out of Westminster.

In a statement issued after the meeting, The Hartlepool Labour Group said the Government’s financial settlement “fails to reflect Hartlepool’s level of need”, particularly the soaring costs of children’s services, and insisted the council would “not balance the books on the backs of local families”.

But the decision to postpone drew sharp criticism, most notably from independent councillor Gordon Cranney, who voted against the Labour motion and warned that continued delay undermines the councils financial stability.

“Hartlepool needs financial stability and certainty,” he said. “Delaying important decisions while repeatedly seeking additional funding does not provide that certainty for residents or services, particularly when previous requests have already been rejected.”

Cllr Cranney said councillors had a duty to deal with confirmed figures rather than political hopes. “I believe our responsibility as councillors is to deal with the facts in front of us and set a lawful, deliverable budget based on confirmed funding, not assumptions,” he added.

His intervention came amid intense political speculation in the run-up to the meeting that as many as 21 councillors could resign from the Labour group in protest at the funding crisis — a dramatic scenario that ultimately failed to materialise.

“There were public suggestions that 21 councillors would resign from Labour this evening. That did not happen,” Cllr Cranney said. “Budget setting is too important to be used as leverage or political theatre.” As an independent, he said his vote would continue to be guided by what he believed to be the long-term interests of the town rather than party strategy.

The backdrop to the standoff is the Government’s earlier refusal to hand Hartlepool a £3 million financial rescue package. Ministers are said to have made it clear at the time that they would not provide additional funding while the council declined to use its own powers to raise council tax — a position widely interpreted as a rejection of what critics described as a taxpayer-funded freeze.

Opposition voices now argue that the deferral represents a reckless political gamble, with the council leadership and Hartlepool’s Labour MP attempting to apply fresh pressure on Westminster in the hope of forcing a reversal.

Council staff will have to work overtime & weekends to produce

Council Tax Bills its claimed

The deferral at the councils full meeting is leading to claims households may not get their first council tax bill in time for their first payment leaving their accounts causing chaos.

Inside the Civic Centre, however, the practical consequences are immediate. Finance officials reportedly now face a heavily compressed timetable to bring revised proposals back to a future full council meeting while still meeting the statutory deadline for issuing council tax bills for the new financial year. The delay is expected to place significant strain on staff, with weekend working and extended hours likely to be required to reconfigure the budget and complete the billing process on time a source told the Teesside & Durham Post Yesterday Evening.

The voting pattern also exposed divisions across the council chamber, with Reform councillors abstaining from the vote & one independent voting against the postponement, while others backed Labour’s call for a united lobbying effort — allowing the leadership to present the outcome as a cross-party stand for the town.

A fight for Fairness or a Fight for their Political Career's. ?

Labours gamble to defer the council tax setting represents a financial gamble resting solely on assumptions which many say is simply 'reckless' and causing further uncertainty

Labour framed the move as a fight for fairness rather than a party-political calculation, declaring Hartlepool “will not be ignored” in its demand for proper funding.

Yet the legal reality remains unchanged. The council must still set a balanced budget, and without new money from central government the gap will ultimately have to be closed through some combination of tax increases, service reductions or both.

For residents, the result is continued uncertainty over next year’s council tax bills. For council staff, it means an intense race against time to meet billing deadlines. And for the Labour administration running HBC, it represents a high-stakes bet that renewed political pressure will succeed where the earlier “cap-in-hand” approach for emergency funding failed.