MORE than £100,000 in savings will have to be made by Stratton St Margaret Parish Council after they managed to significantly reduce the increase to next year's precept.

Last week, the original calculations for the precept - a tax on residents in the area to fund the parish council's services - indicated that it would have to increase by 24 per cent in the 2018/2019 financial year.

This increase was thought to be necessary due to fact that the parish will receive less central and local government funding and it has taken on the day-to-day running of the local library and StreetSmart team.

This 24 per cent increase was unpopular with councillors, so parish staff put their heads together and worked throughout the week to find ways of balancing the books better and getting a lower figure.

They aimed to put forward a 16 per cent increase to the precept at Tuesday's council meeting.

At the meeting itself, Chair of Stratton St Margaret Parish Council Joe Tray announced that things had worked out much better than expected and the precept increase would now be just 13 per cent.

This increase was swiftly agreed upon after a brief discussion.

The precept increase will come into effect during the next financial year, which starts in April.

However, the 11 per cent difference between the original figure calculated and the one that was eventually agreed will require the parish council to save a whopping £111,000.

Several suggestions and ideas are currently being considered to find significant savings.

Cllr Joe Tray was quick to reassure residents that none of these suggestions involved cutting back council-run services.

He said: "People who use our facilities should not see much of a difference, we hope it will be seamless.

"We streamlined everything a little.

"Some of the plans, projects and non-essential maintenance work we had scheduled for next year have been put on the backburner for now.

"We are also considering a slight increase to the price of gym membership.

During the council meeting, Cllr Tray revealed that most of the money in the precept goes towards funding Grange Leisure Centre, which the parish council operate.

He added: "If it was just the parish and the library and StreetSmart that we looked after, there would be a zero per cent precept increase.

"We are working in the short-term to reduce this increase as much as possible by clever thinking rather than chopping here and there.

"It was thought that 24 per cent was too high an increase so we asked the clerk to bring it down to a more reasonable amount.

"Every department worked together and worked really hard to bring the increase down.

"Thank you to the staff, I'm really happy with what they've accomplished."