SO THE results are in and the people of York have voted to increase council tax by five per cent.

Or at least those who bothered to take part in this consultation exercise have chosen that option. City of York Council received 7,000 replies to its ballot forms, of which 82,000 were sent out.

On the face of it, that looks like a poor response, with fewer than ten per cent of residents going to the trouble of recording their view on how council tax should rise.

Council leader Steve Galloway responds to such criticism by saying that normally these exercises would expect a response closer to two per cent. The trouble is Mr Galloway appears to be talking about marketing campaigns rather than experiments in democracy.

There remains a strong argument against holding a referendum on individual issues such as council tax. Voters make their decision at local election time and expect the party they elect to take strong decisions on their behalf, rather than staging impromptu opinion polls.

Then there is the worry that councils who have consulted in this way can, if the decisions they take prove to be unpopular, pass the buck back and say to the electorate: you voted for this.

But the consultation was held and a five per cent rise has been chosen. The council would surely have preferred ten per cent. Now the difficult part is deciding how to raise money to cover the shortfall, or what services to cut.

Those decisions will have to be made without asking voters what they think.

Updated: 10:57 Monday, January 10, 2005