To wonder why council tax in my area is £100s more expensive than many areas of London?

[Bookaboo]

Our council tax has increased yet again, and I happened upon this article in yesterday’s Guardian about the massive difference in council tax bills across the country.
www.theguardian.com/money/2018/mar/03/council-tax-unfair-westminster

If council tax is based on property value, why does my average 3 bed semi in the North East cost almost double that of an 8 bedroom mansion in Westminster?

Makes no sense whatsoever!

If they’re paying ‘less’ it’s probably one of the only areas of their lives where they pay less. They will pay more for housing, food and travel which is of an inferior standard anyway (except for food).

It won’t really affect millionaires much. But it will mean that low wages tenants are pushed beyond what they can afford and have to give up heating their home or eating or something equally frivolous.

And just because some daft twat in the North doesn’t realise that plenty of people in the South East aren’t millionaires and are hardly keeping their heads above water as it is.

Perhaps people up north could consider our better quality of life, bigger houses and less stretched services and better home life balance and greater disposable income before whinging about hard done by we are?

I had to leave London and move to the North because the South East was too expensive and I’m now far from my family and friends. But I haven’t forgotten how difficult it is living in the South East when you’re not rich.

And quite frankly, in my book if you’re demanding other people be made to pay more council tax in the interests of ‘fairness’ whilst not being at all concerned that other people’s access to affordable housing is nowhere near what your own is then you’re not interested in ‘fairness’, you’re just rather an unpleasant scumbag who wants to punish other people just to make yourself feel good.

Everyone not in a flat - lots of flats are more than 320K as well of course.

This is an area with a LOT of family homes, we are that sort of place. Roads and roads full of 30s semis.

A daft twat? Fuck off.

I am a daft twat from the north and have every sympathey with those struggling in the south east.
I do, however, pay an outrageous amount of council tax compared to city dwellers.

I am most certtainly not a twat, so piss off.

How much do you pay?

Valuation
Band

Values

Barnet
Council

Greater
London
Authority

Total

A up to £40,000 £769.80 £186.68 £956.48
B £40,001 - £52,000 £898.10 £217.79 £1,115.89
C £52,001 - £68,000 £1,026.40 £248.91 £1,275.31
D £68,001 - £88,000 £1,154.70 £280.02 £1,434.72
E £88,001 - £120,000 £1,411.30 £342.25 £1,753.55
F £120,001 - £160,000 £1,667.90 £404.47 £2,072.37
G £160,001 - £320,000 £1,924.50 £466.70 £2,391.20
H Over £320,001 £2,309.40 £560.04 £2,869.44

AR* Up to £40,000 £ 851.92
A Up to £40,000 £1,022.29
B £40,001 to £52,000 £1,192.68
C £52,001 to £68,000 £1,363.06
D £68,001 to £88,000 £1,533.44
E £88,001 to £120,000 £1,874.20
F £120,001 to £160,000 £2,214.96
G £160,001 to £320,000 £2,555.73
H more than £320,000 £3,066.88

Second one is city of york, put that in as I went there recently and had a really good time so it came to mind!

Don't look that different?

OP, your council tax is high because it costs, per paying household, a lot to provide the services your council provides. Could be because your council provides a lot of services, could be because the services are expensive to run, and the per household bit might be because your area doesn't have as many eligible households to spread the cost, or your council isn't ruthless about collection.

Some councils keep costs low by cutting provision to the bone. My council came up with the wheeze of removing most of the litter bins because that reduced the cost of waste collection. That's quite a visible cost-cutting measure, imagine what it says about the cuts to invisible services, such as those for the elderly or mental health services. Is your council that focused on cost-cutting? Possibly not.

I suspect we're going to see a shake-up with regard to council funding. Post-Brexit there are going to be large swathes of the country that aren't going to be able to balance the books, in any way, shape or form. And we're already seeing some councils facing bankruptcy. They just won;t be able to raise the funds to run even a minimal provision.

Interesting times ahead.

Nottingham

Valuation Band

Valuation Range £

Council Tax 2016/2017

Council Tax 2017/2018

A

0 to 40,000

£1,180.72

£1,234.49

B

40,001 - 52,000

£1,377.51

£1,440.24

C

52,001 - 68,000

£1,574.29

£1,645.99

D

68,001 - 88,000

£1,771.08

£1,851.74

E

88,001 -120,000

£2,164.65

£2,263.24

F

120,001 - 160,000

£2,558.22

£2,674.73

G

160,001 - 320,000

£2,951.80

£3,086.23

H

320,001 +

£3,542.16

£3,703.48

That does look more! A question for Nottingham council I would say.

Putting pretty much all families who live in London on top whack council tax isn't the answer though.

The Guardian article actually probably isn’t that helpful, as it’s turned this into another north v south argument when that isn’t the issue.
It could have easily compared an area in Manchester with an area in Nottingham, or an area of East Anglia with an area of Cornwall.

However when some starts slinging insults at others like “daft twat from the north”, anything they say instantly loses any credibility.

someone

Our services are shit, barnet council are tory run, penny pinching bastards. They have shifted loads of council jobs to private contractors and they give much worse services. Libraries cut to the bone, they are actively trying to keep people who need them out e.g. children are not allowed in without an adult which means no more homework there for clever kids from difficult homes. I have friends who work in things like planning dept all have been transferred onto private countracts so no longer emplyed by council, losing lots of certainty protections etc. We live right near the high street roads never get gritted. They are very keen on letting listed building go to ruin so their property developer mates can move in....

And so on :)

Ours was the one where you had to pay £100+ a year to park outside your house if restrictions and the council leader said publicly that he wanted to screw residents for all they were worth through parking, little did he realise that admitting this was illegal, so they had to put it back down and pay us all back HA!

That is what our council are like

Rough sleeping also massively on the rise.

It will cost a lot more to provide services in a sparsely-populated, rural district. Just think about it for a minute. Take one service, and think about how you'd employ people to deliver it, how it would be delivered, and so on.

And think about how a sparsely populated, but geographically extensive area is necessarily going to have fewer people to pay the cost of those services. Those areas probably have an ageing population, so more users of services, and fewer people able to pay higher rates anyway.

And the same is true when it comes to cutting costs. In densely populated areas, you can cut services by cutting the locations in which provision is available - so you can close all but 3 libraries, which will also double as out-reach and information and delivery centres for other services - but it's harder to imagine being able to close all but 3 libraries in some areas. Do some areas still have mobile library services? That must be quite pricey. Useful and great - but pricey.

Theoretically, that difference is met with a central government top-up - but I think we all know austerity has kicked in hard with reference to local government.

Sorry, i lost my temper there, but seriously 'some twat from the north'?

Calmed down a bit now......

I am actually okay with our council tax, it is what it is, but we are rural, so no street lights, our roads are not adapted, we have no local amenities. We have rare, amd very expensive public transport. We have a library about 8 miles away that opens 3 days per week.
However, we do have great schools (although my kids are grown and gone), a wonderful emergency service and a lovely man who cuts the grass in the village and plants flowers - and no, I am not being facetious.

We pay just over 2k per annum.

Enjoy a debate about council tax, but please stop with promoting the north south divide, and stop calling me a twat.

The level of Council tax is determined by the amount the Council receives from central govt vs the amount they have to pay out in services.
We need to look both at the total amount of Council Tax for a particular area and the way it is divided among Council taxpayers.

Do some councils need much less / more Council Tax in total than others ?
Is the central grant allocation out of date for some councils ?

People who live in 150k houses should be paying much less council tax than people in £1 million houses

• we wouldn't expect people earning 15k to subsidise those on 100k

So we need to address regional inequalities wrt Council Tax - it can be a serious financial burden for those who aren't wealthy and a cause of spiralling personal debt.

BUT, no party dares tackle council tax revaluation because of the backlash from wealthy home-owners

Similarly, all parties want to keep house prices high and increasing, because home owners vote more.
Also, many MPs are btl landlords and all seem to have property portfolios - not representative of the average person looking for somewhere barely affordable to rent.

It's going to get nastier when the impact of Brexit kicks in. These are just the initial skirmishes.

My guess in that when some - the Brexit-voting areas - lose 16% of their GDP, they really are going to need some massive kind of redistribution of income, just to keep the streetlights on. And the money will be redistributed from large urban areas - which will also be feeling a huge impact on income - that, by and large, voted against Brexit.

It's going to be nasty.

"People who live in 150k houses should be paying much less council tax than people in £1 million houses

• we wouldn't expect people earning 15k to subsidise those on 100k"

This is a simplistic approach which ignores the realities of the house price boom in London, the posiiton of people who have lived here for years who may have a house worth a lot but little income, and that the "fault" of this lies with massive buyup of property in the middle from abroad which pushes the prices up.

The situation in London is appalling - many here do not WANT it to be a ghetto for the rich, we have communities here, multi generations in the same area, the tories are attempting to destroy it, the level of "gentrification" is obscene. We have just shipped out loads of poorer families - who does this benefit? Not them, not their children, not the jobs and schools they leave, not the areas they are sent to.

I woudl HAPPILY take a drop in the value of my house (which has doubled in 10 years) for a return to a more mixed and integrated London which is for everyone.

I would also be happy to pay more tax for better public services. I do not WANT London to be a massive gated community for the hyper-rish.

My family are northern. I grew up in London and now live in the north. Don’t you tell me I’m the one giving it the north/south divide on a thread whinging about ‘millionaires in London’ not paying enough council tax.

Most people in London can’t even afford to have children or house them adequately without being hit with a big council tax bill because of a few northerners whinging that it’s not fair they pay less for one damn thing.

I had to make a choice if I wanted children I had to move a long way from my support systems and everybody I knew. Many of my friends have never had families they wanted because they simply couldn’t afford them in London or the South East. I’ve seen friends with children struggle with homelessness and their children have to go without because the cost of living is so high there.

So quite frankly, stick your north/south divide where the sun doesn’t shine.

It makes me so angry some people in the north just have no idea what a struggle it is for many people in the south and have no damn idea how lucky they are to be able to afford to have kids to send to school and have bedrooms to put them in and gardens for them to play in.

So, yes, I do think those people whinging ‘it’s not fair’ that they pay a couple of hundred pounds a year more in council tax are utter fucking selfish scumbags who have no idea how lucky they are.

In terms of housing I think kBrexit may be positive. That's about the only thing that is! People are leaving. Rental prices in London are stagnant or coming down as people who came here to earn are packing up and leaving. Plus the changes to BTL tax reliefs might mean more property on the market and bring prices down a bit.

This is the only positive on the horizon I can see - and it comes from a negative - people leaving.

If only they would clamp down on foreign property investment. Loads of property in London lies empty it's a disgrace.

I agree with you snibble, and this is typical Guardian bullshit. The Guardian care about those at the very bottom on benefits who don’t even pay council tax. As soon as you have a job, no matter how low waged, they couldn’t give two shits. The low waged have been socially cleansed from London and the Guardian with it’s property porn pages and cheerleading of gentrification are one of the biggest drivers of that.

Snibble It's all relative. As income drops - due to Brexit - who do you think that impacts on most? Who will be able to buy cheaper property in London, when many in the UK see their income and job security drop?

It's not going to be people in the North East, where manufacturers have left and jobs are gone, is it?

It'll be non-UK-based asset-buyers. Just the same as now, really.

I really don't see any upsides to this. Just a whole load of pain.

And wouldn’t those rich Guardianistas just love it if Council Tax rises made it impossible for all those builders and secretaries and nurses and teachers to afford to carry on living in the houses they bought in the 80s and 90s and had to sell up to liberal elite Guardian reading hypocrites.

The problem is the last time anyone tried to reform local taxation there were riots (poll tax) so we have a cobbled together system from a long period ago when populations, local government responsibilities and house prices were very different. The incentive for any government to tackle it is very low as the buck can be passed to local politics - often different to central. I think the idea of a local tax for local services makes sense but central government interfere so much now - in terms of grants to and obligations on local councils it is a pretty meaningless system.

And I'm really, really tired of this anti-London thing.

It was weaponised by Brexit. I'm beyond fed up with it. We have some really unpleasant times ahead. Economically, it's going to make 'austerity' look like the Promised Land. Seriously, we need to start practising not attacking each other like abused dogs over scraps.