Published by , March 25th 2010 at 6:22 pm
Tory cheek on council tax rises
The Suns today reports that council tax “has doubled under Labour” – but 30 of the 50 councils with the highest rate of council tax increases are run by the Tories, with a further seven Conservative-led coalitions.
The Sun report says:
“Council tax has doubled under Labour – and the average bill in England is set to soar by another £25. Families will have to find £1,439 a year for an average Band D home – costing a record £120 a month.”
The story does not, however, mention that the council tax increases result from decisions taken locally, not in Whitehall. Indeed, central government funding has risen 45 per cent in real terms since 1997. By contrast, funding fell 7 per cent under the last time the Conservatives were in power – another fact overlooked by the Sun.
Five of the top six councils with the highest real term increase in council tax in the past 13 years are all Conservative run: South Cambridgeshire (98%), East Cambridgeshire (97%), Fenland (96%), Westminster (95%) and Wandsworth (94%). The council with the highest increase is, however, Labour-run Tower Hamlets in east London, which has had a 120% real term increase.
But overall, just six of the top 50 councils are Labour run or Labour led – the same as for the Lib Dems – with one led by none of the main parties.
The average council tax in top-tier Labour local authorities for the next year is £1,005 per dwelling, a 1.2 per cent increase on 2009/10, compared to £1,301 in Tory top-tier authorities – a 1.9 per cent rise – and £1,197 in Liberal Democrat top-tier local authorities.
The Sun’s shoddy journalism is compounded by the fact that the quotes attributed to Ms Spelman are identical, word-for-word, to those used by her in November. Her line that “Council tax is Gordon Brown’s most painful stealth tax”, followed by the claim “you pay more and get less under Labour” is a direct lift from a Tory press release dated 5 November 2009, reported in the following day’s Express.
The Conservatives were unavailable for comment.
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Tory lies on council tax rises: http://bit.ly/dlc6Q4
The Sun may engage in shoddy journalism, but this blog post isn’t much better. To state that ‘the council tax increases result from decisions taken locally, not in Whitehall’ is either disingenuous or misguided or both. Local authorities get about four fifths of their funding from central government, with the difference made up by Council Tax. So changes in Council Tax are driven to a large extent by central government funding decisions. If you were able to show how changes in Council Tax related to changes in central government funding of local authorities, then you might have something intelligent to say on the matter.
This @leftfootfwd piece shows the situation in Bham – only central funding is propping up our rotten administration: http://bit.ly/cm3iWg
DEFRA staff have admitted that they ran computer projections of the results for umpteen different formulae for “needs-based” assessment of central government grants in order to choose one that particularly favoured Labour-controlled local authorities. These formulae have been repeatedly changed over the last dozen years as control of local authorities have shifted.
The reason why council tax has increased faster for Conservative-controlled local authorities is that New Labour has imposed extra costs on all local authorities and then provided much higher subsidies to those conrolled by Labour. A few local authorities have got so fed up that they produce annual data on the change in their grant from central government compared to inflation and the general average.
Do you think that we are stupid?
As others have said, the level of council tax is the (small) difference between central government grant and expenditure. They have no control over the first of those. If you’re wanting to score points about the efficiency of a council, you should look at the % change in their expenditure rather than council tax. And given the extra burdens central government have been imposing on local government, you need to compare that across all councils, as the benchmark will be considerably in excess of RPI.
Just taking South Cambs in 2007/8 as an example :
http://www.scambs.gov.uk/CouncilTaxAndBenefits/Finance/annualReport.htm#COST
They appear to be making payments to central government of £2.265m, and received £1.198m towards their running costs in government grant and from their reserves. Thus it would appear that the council taxpayers of South Cambs are subsidising central government’s running costs rather than vice versa – no wonder their council tax has gone up!!!
To be fair, they also had £4.06m in “grants and allowances” towards capital expenditure, but that’s not broken down.
The absolute level of council tax also matters – South Cambs D band was £1,292.84 in 2007/8. What’s the average D band in Labour boroughs?
East Cambs 2008/9 numbers are here :
http://www.eastcambs.gov.uk/docs/publications/finance/accountsum0809.pdf
Government grant is £0.977m, 9.4% of their total income. Their net expenditure over 2007/08 went up by £1.1m, more than their entire government grant!
Although the Government insists Central Government Grant went up by 4% this year, they are being economical with the truth. My council received just 1.5% rise this year. The Governments claim that they fund local Government to the tune of 75% can be reveresed here. The council tax payer is having to find 75% of the councils spend.
If we received as much grant as many of the Lab our Heartlands, we could well be expecting a dividend!
I forgot to mention the distortion caused by using obviously wrong numbers for population etc – Westminster (coincidentally a Conservative-controlled borough) complained because the quoted figures for their population for calculating their entitlement to government grants was less than the number of individuals paying Council Tax.
More households than people? New Labour IT success!
Tory cheek on council tax rises | Left Foot Forward http://bit.ly/dnzUdS (via @twttimes)
What I find interesting is how Cameron keeps talking about freezing council tax, seemingly oblivious to the damage it is doing in Nottinghamshire under the Tories.
And that is I think despite an increase in government funding for Notts of 1.5% this year, contrary to the Tory argument that funding is coming down.
RT @wdjstraw Tories will freeze council tax for 2 years but 37/50 top rises since 1997 are from Tory or part-Tory run http://bit.ly/cm3iWg
RT @wdjstraw: Tories will freeze council tax for 2 years but 37/50 top rises since 1997 are from Tory or part-Tory run http://bit.ly/cm3iWg
Tories will freeze council tax for 2 years but 37/50 top rises since 1997 are from Tory or part-Tory run http://bit.ly/cm3iWg
RT @wdjstraw: Tories will freeze council tax for 2 years but 37/50 top rises since 1997 are from Tory or part-Tory run http://bit.ly/cm3iWg
RT @wdjstraw: Tories will freeze council tax for 2 years but 37/50 top rises since 1997 are from Tory or part-Tory run http://bit.ly/cm3iWg
[...] Tory cheek on council tax rises (leftfootforward.org) [...]
There are too many people on the Left that are actually against a freeze on Council Tax. These are the folk who give Socialists a bad name; moreover, they are not Socialists at all. If they were, they would understand that any tax based on the value of property, even if you are renting, has no merit whatsoever. We need a tax that is 100% means tested. These Champagne Socialists need to understand that for the poorer sections of society, which they are supposed to represent, it cannot go up any more than it is.
These people who are completely detached from reality need removing from all union activity immediately, as they are killing the Left.