MARK Harper trumpets the freezing of council tax until 2015. Unfortunately unless he has found a way of reducing inflation from 5.2 per cent currently to zero overnight the Forest of Dean District Council will run a deficit of over 25 per cent of the annual council tax bill in total by 2015.

In order to make up the deficit over the life of the council they will have to either increase income or reduce costs. Unless they are going to start a business they can only increase their income by additional stealth taxes, for example introducing car parking charges.

The council included car parking charges in its budget produced in February 2011 based on a report that is so flawed as to be embarrassing. The report excludes potential expenditure of at least £40,000 and by 2016 expects income to have risen by 60 per cent. There is not enough room in the car parks to allow for this additional traffic flow so they are obviously going to increase charges significantly over that period.

What else are they going to charge us for that was previously included in the council tax charge?

Generally there are two ways of reducing costs – either cut services or find "efficiency savings".

I am sure that there are many ways that the efficiency of the council can be improved, including reducing councillors expenses. However the Tories have been running the council for nearly five years and have not found the efficiencies yet. If efficiencies exist why have they and their predecessors been wasting our money to date?

Sadly I am sure that we are looking at further cuts to our services in order to justify Mark Harper and David Cameron's headline grabbing.

– Colin Guyton, UKIP secretary, Forest of Dean Branch, The Great Barn, Park Farm, High Street, Ruardean.