Check your recent Council Tax Bill

I have just received a call from the Treasurer of the Avon & Somerset Police Authority.

I queried why in the budget I received through the post,why it showed a tenfold increase from £2M in 2008/9 to £20m 2009/10 for Capital expenditure.

Tenfold ! We are in a small largely rural District Council

This was hurriedly explain as a refurbishment project for detention facilities that needed bringing up to 21st standards.

Pressing a little harder it turns out this is not a refurbishment project at all. It is a PFI project with the Home Office ( I did not get an answer as to where the money is going to be borrowed from and on what terms) to build 'detention facilities' near Motorways and in City Centres.

I have published before the job advert for an asessor for this programme, but then it was being done under the auspices of the Foreign Office.

The State is building a lot more detention capability because it thinks it is going to need it.