'I wish we had control over council tax rise - but we don't'
BBCAfter Bradford's local authority announced it had asked the government for permission to increase council tax by up to almost 15%, people in the city told BBC News about what the potential hit to their pocket would mean.
Wednesday morning saw people scurrying across the centre of the UK City of Culture to get to work, university and simply to run errands.
Many of the 560,000 residents of Bradford district would have been unaware that their council, desperate to balance the books, had taken the exceptional step of considering raising their council tax by between 9.99% and 14.99%.
Syed Bukhari was in the centre with his wife and two children when I caught up with him.
He has a simple message for Susan Hinchcliffe, leader of the area's Labour-run council: "It's too much, we are already struggling."
The 50-year-old adds: "It's very hard to pay for everyone, it's not just me.
"We're just working class people, so it's very hard.
"If you got to the superstore now the prices have doubled.
"A full trolley used to be £50 to £60, now it is more than £100, so it is hard to live now."
Syed says that a potential increase of about 15% is "a very big increase and we can't afford that".
Madara Dzirlanka explains: "It will affect me a lot.
"I already have to pay lots of payments, so it will be hard.
The 33-year-old arrived in Bradford in 2011 after moving from Latvia.
What was it like then, I ask.
"Kind of cheap, but now everything is going up and up every single month," Madara explains.
"To rent a studio flat it is like £650 [a month] and council tax is more than £100, so it is very expensive.
"It's already expensive now, so it is kind of crazy these days."
Council calculations say that if the local tax went up by the 9.99% figure it would mean an annual increase of £113.34 or £2.17 extra a week for Band A properties.
If it were to be increased by 14.99%, it would surge by £170.07 annually - about £3.27 extra each week.
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Paul Sullivan has been living in Bradford for more than 20 years after moving from Cork, admits to "mixed feelings".
"If the tax is used wisely and to help the people of Bradford and to help our services, then I guess I could reluctantly swallow that.
"But I would like to see some really good justification and I would like to see more accountability for how that money is spent," he says.
The 47-year-old adds: "It is going to be a very tough pill to swallow.
"Mortgage rates, renting costs, everything seems to be going really high.
"More support from central government, I think, is needed."
He says people in Bradford have had to deal with "very harsh cutbacks" in vital council-funded services, such as waste management and libraries.
"Is this extra money going back into the community or is it going into a black hole?" Paul asks.
Roy Hainsworth, 66, says bluntly: "We're going to have to put up with it.
"We can't change it.
"It affects everybody, old and young."
Wife Jan, 63, seems to share her husband's reluctant acceptance.
"Everything has gone up," she tells me.
"We've no control over it.
"I wish we had, but we haven't."
The council's cabinet will discuss the proposals in the coming days, with the authority expecting to hear a decision from government on their inflation-busting tax plans sometime after mid-February.
The council leader has admitted that her proposals are "not great news for residents".
"What we've got to do is make sure the council is on a financially sustainable footing," she says.
Robbie Moore, Conservative MP for Keighley and Ilkey, said: "Bradford Council leaders have somehow managed to make the situation we're all facing across the Bradford district far, far worse."
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