Had a reply to my complaint from my council. it ran to 3 pages + another 5 pages of attachments. If you cut through all the waffle such as " all the meetings where the increases were agreed were open to the public" It would seem that all the services given up by the County and local councils due to their being constrained to an increase of no more than 5% were adopted by the town council in their precept because they have no such constraints. I'd put them all against the wall - talk about divorced from real life......