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Council tax is not a sexy political issue. The environment (thanks mainly to David Cameron), combating terrorism and the state of the NHS are all issues that get bigger profiles in the daily news. Local taxation, however, is very relevant to local people who are increasingly finding it difficult to balance the family finances. In April, the average annual council tax bill in England is likely to grow to £1,300. Similar council tax bills were only £688 when Labour came to power in 1997. That is a dramatic increase, particularly when one bears in mind that household incomes fell last year in real terms1, and have only risen by £2.25 a year on average since 2001.
In response to this family hardship, a number of Conservative Councils have been trying hard to address the increasing burden of local taxation. Croydon Council has announced that it is to reduce its annual expenditure by a further £5million, just months after cutting its budget by £15million. East Hampshire District Council has recently announced its intention to freeze the authority’s share of the local tax until 2010.
Local decisions such as these will contribute towards the Conservative Party’s chances of electoral success in May. Not just in Croydon and East Hampshire, but in every part of the country where Conservative councillors are delivering services that are good value for money.
January 24th, 2007 - 11:26 am
Might be worth asking what they have cut to make these savings. As soon as Croydon went Tory they started slashing social services which, apart from schools, make up the largest chunk of council budgets. In Berkshire Wokingham District Council Tories are making cuts to their social care provision to keep council tax down. In Reading we may end up with a slightly higher council tax increase (although maybe not) but we won’t be removing care from people in desperate need. The real issue is the Council Tax, invented by the Tories and maintained by Labour. It needs to be reformed but governments are too scared of the potential losers to change. Keeping council tax down by slashing services to those most in need is old Tory politics, I was hoping the Tories were moving on from this but clearly this is not the case with Tory councils across the country. You’re right about one thing though, this is likely to help the Tories in local elections but will the cllrs be able to sleep at night?