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NEWS buried away in the detail of the provisional local government finance settlement for 2009/10 suggests that Wiltshire council tax payers will not have to foot the bill for the £8 million Icelandic bank fiasco - not next year anyway.

According to a report we have had sight of, the Government will make a regulation which will allow those local authorities with funds invested in Icelandic banks to postpone the impact of the impairments required by accountancy practice, for budget setting purposes until 2010/11.

“That last paragraph, is written of course, in councilspeak, but in plain English it means ‘forget about the missing millions until after the election and hopefully we will have got some of the cash back by then',” said Steve Dancey, who has spent decades pouring over council budgets.

“We should be glad that there are some Labour councils affected by this problem.

“If it had only been Tory or Lib Dem councils the government will have delighted in turning the screw on them for party political reasons.

“As it is it appears that once again Wiltshire will be getting another poor settlement in terms of grant next year – which is a little surprising as I would have expected the Government to have been a little more generous this year to bolster the unitary authority idea.”