0% inflation? Not if you pay council tax or use water: Families face raft of price rises 

  • Price hikes are due on council tax, water, NHS charges, stamps and Sky TV
  • Fears public could be lulled into 'false sense of security' by 'zero' inflation
  • Collapse in oil prices has led PM to claim families have an extra £20 a week
  • But many people are dreading rising bills they will receive in coming weeks

Families face a raft of price hikes from this week on everything from the cost of a bath to prescription medicines.

Advice organisations fear consumers could be lulled into a ‘false sense of security’ by the current Consumer Price Index ‘zero’ measure of inflation and fail to budget for the coming rises.

Increases are due in council tax, water bills, vehicle exise duty, NHS charges, stamps and even Sky television packages.

Families face a raft of price hikes from this week, with increases due in council tax, water bills, vehicle exise duty, NHS charges, stamps and even Sky television packages (picture posed by model)

Families face a raft of price hikes from this week, with increases due in council tax, water bills, vehicle exise duty, NHS charges, stamps and even Sky television packages (picture posed by model)

Inflation is currently 0 per cent and is predicted to show a minus figure for March and April.

The collapse in the cost of oil and petrol in the past year by around 50 per cent has had a dramatic impact on living standards - with Prime Minister David Cameron saying it has given families an extra £20 per week - while a supermarket price war has delivered savings on food.

But many people have reason to dread the rising bills that will be arriving on their doormats and email inboxes over the coming weeks, many of which are being hiked by government departments and agencies.

Hannah Maundrell, editor in chief of advice website money.co.uk, said: ‘Whilst we can’t ignore the fact that some of our living costs are going down, such as food and mortgage rates, others are still going up.

‘It really worries me that so much talk of 0 per cent inflation will make consumers sit on their hands in the false sense of security that prices for everything will remain static.

‘Regardless of the economic terminology, consumers still need to save money wherever they can to accommodate rising costs in some areas of their finances.’ 

The average council tax bill for a Band D property will go up by £16 a year to £1,484 from tomorrow, yet local authorities are still warning of massive cuts to services.

Funding for arts, museums and libraries is on the chopping block, while support for home care for the elderly is also being squeezed.

The NHS dental charge payable for a band one course of treatment, something like a filling, will increase by 30p from £18.50 to £18.80 (picture posed by models)

The NHS dental charge payable for a band one course of treatment, something like a filling, will increase by 30p from £18.50 to £18.80 (picture posed by models)

For those who live in particularly valuable homes, new property taxes could be a sign of things to come with Labour and the Lib Dems going into the General Election with proposals to hit owners of expensive homes.

The Lib Dems want a new annual ‘mansion tax’ on homes worth more than £2million, while Labour has proposed something similar in a policy that has angered some within the party, ranging from Lord Mandelson to MP Diane Abbott.

Labour London MPs are angry at the prospect of money being raised from families in the South East through the new property tax to subsidise services, such as the NHS, in Scotland.

Water bills will go up by an average of £5 a year to £401 for the average household from tomorrow as privatised firms continue to soak customers while paying millions to their, mostly foreign, shareholders.

Also going up tomorrow is car tax, with Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) set to increase by up to £10 for some categories of vehicles, particularly larger cars with big engines and higher carbon emissions.

For example, the first year VED rate for a band L car, such as an Audi Q7 or BMW X5, will go up from £860 to £870.

In health, people who need regular prescriptions will see the charge rise from £8.08 to £8.20, which is just under two per cent. At the same time, the cost of going to see the dentist for NHS care - if you can find one – is also on the rise.

The NHS dental charge payable for a band one course of treatment, something like a filling, will increase by 30p from £18.50 to £18.80. Band 2 treatment goes up by 80p to £51.30 and band 3 by £3.50 to £222.50.

Despite the price rises, many dentists claim the NHS fees fail to ensure they are able to make a decent living, with patients being pushed towards more expensive private care as a result.

Yesterday, the cost of a simple first class stamp went up by a penny to 64p and second class rose by 1p to 54p.

For larger items, the price of a large letter first class stamp up to 100g rose by 2p to 95p and the price of a large letter second class stamp up to 100g increased by 1p to 74p.

And this is not the end of the pain. Sky recently announced a series of price rises, apparently to fund its multi-billion pound bill to buy the rights to Premier League football matches.

From June, its popular family bundle, which does not even include the media giant’s sport channels, will rise by rise by £3 a month to £36 - £432 a year.