‘People are going to stop paying’: inside the town facing a 25% council tax hike

17 comments

1. People should stop paying. Council tax is now a welfare tax delivered not by a local council but a local social care authority who do a bit of bin emptying as a side hustle

2. Bung us all in jail. Oh that’s right – you can’t, they’re already full.

3. Ahh council tax, regressive taxation in action

4. They’re not wrong, I suspect people will stop paying. 

   Just to point out though, councils have to set a balanced budget by law and local taxation is one of the few areas where they have any real control over what they bring in. Situations like this are the result of conservative era austerity policies reducing the central government grant to provincial councils that simply don’t have the strong rates and other fee income that London Boroughs or big cities do. 

   We’ve already seen where councils trying to be “entrepreneurs” leads (see Woking, Thurrock and others) but blanket tax rises like this in already economically depressed areas won’t work either. It needs the labour government to go back to the drawing board with it. 

5. 25% increase in tax *and* a £60m loan from central government? To correct “£30m historical accountancy errors” 18 months after the LibDems gained it from the Tories and six months after the Tories lost the national government?

   Seeing these sorts of swings in accounts from councils across the country, sure costs have gone up a lot but this much in a year since the last accounts? In my opinion its councils trying to force central government to change its positions. They bent the truth to pass their accounts before so the tory central government didn’t take over and now they’re trying to push labour into reversing their policies.

6. Labour’s refusal to restore (or acknowledge the cut) the central government Council grants is pathetic. They know peoples council tax bills will increase but they don’t care as they can blame it on the tories or the councils themselves. Same old New Labour.

7. It’s not good for them but council tax charges are very unfairly distributed. A 25% bump for them means the charge for a Band D property will go from £1,700 to £2,125. Here the charge is already £2,500 and we have not had any kind of special measures just relentless year on year rises under governments and councils of all colours. I think the whole property tax system needs to be made much fairer and charged nationally.

8. Selling off all council assets and getting rid of council workers then hiring them all back as contractors and paying private landlords was always doomed to fail. All areas of government and working people are broke, inequality is growing, I’m sure it will reach breaking point in my lifetime I’m not sure when. Last statistic I saw people were 6 billion in council tax debt, people can’t afford it.

9. “labour will freeze council tax, not a penny more on your bills, yes you heard that right” – Keir Starmer.

   Don’t repeat in public or you will be labelled a far right thug.

10. The whole of domestic council tax banding should be re-determined. Make it into a property tax that is directly related to the value of the property. The existing bands are based on 1991 property valuations, which are grossly out of date, even if adjusted for the value of the pound (because the value of property has increased massively compared with othe things). Much worse is the ceiling effect. In the area where I live, not far from London a Band G house worth £875,000 (not particularly unusual in this area) would pay around £3,440 per year. Meanwhile, a Band H house worth FIVE times as much at £4,375,000 (there are some) only pays about £680 more in council tax!

11. What will blow many people’s minds is things like lending other councils money. Bolton Council loaned Birmingham city Council £10m in 2023. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t a huge amount, BUT Bolton isn’t exactly swimming in cash.

12. Inside 10 years council tax is going to be another mortgage for a lot of people. It will become unaffordable. A compound rate rise of the current maximum; you pay 5% more on top of the previous 5% rise the previous year means a £1400 a year bill will rise to £2300 in 10 years. £1800 a year will rise to £3000 in the same time frame. That’s if the cap isn’t scrapped and councils can charge what they like.

13. I am out of juice to squeeze as well and may well stop paying out of protest if it increases this year. 

14. I live in Crewe in the southern part of Cheshire East, and the 9.99% hike is causing some considerable anger. The council have recently spent multiple millions of pounds building a multi-story carpark for a town centre that is literally rubble (the main shopping area bulldozed and left to rot around 5 years ago), this car park is so unused that it is actually costing the council more to run it than it is bringing in in car park fees, to an extend that it is only open for short periods of time and not all floors are accessible.

    Added to that the bin cycle is apparently moving to every 3 weeks, and driving round the town with roads resembling the surface of the moon is next to impossible due to a sudden desire to add speed bumps and cycle lanes on almost every major road.

    But its okay though, as i’m sure the (already rich) residents of Knutsford, Macclesfield, Alderley Edge etc etc will continue to benefit from our council tax.

15. Yet more evidence that we need to scrap council tax and move to LVT or a property tax. At the very least we need to re-work the bandings based on reality, not 1993 property values that were hastily used to bandage Thatcher’s poll tax mess

16. There’s a massive anti council tax movement in the UK ever since COVID and the legal remedies are established and battle proven. You don’t even have to stop paying, simply paying a fiver or so a month and demanding the council prove their incomes expenditures is good enough.

17. My council now spends over 2/3’s of its budget on children’s & adults social care. Every 1% rise in CT gains then only £670k because of the high number of band A & B properties. The number of children being taken into care has tripled since 2019. Placements for young people in some instances are in excess of £10k a week. There just isn’t the scope for further increases & the government are ducking the issues with another “review”.

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