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!

They need to STOP overseas investement in UK property. It has caused massive problems and really ruined people's lives, is not too strong a way to put it, from my perspective.

If we have a lot of property coming onto the market in london and a price drop, it will mean that the people renting here might have an opportunity to get on the property ladder, I hope.

Also maybe Brexit will make |London less appealing to outside property investors but I doubt it. I think the govt will be keen to encourage it's current status as one of the "playgrounds" of the rich.

Eltonjohnssyrup i may have had some sympathy for your argumentin fact i do until you start with the insults.
We are all trying to achieve the same thing - a happy, contented life for us and our families. It pisses me off greatly when people insist that those in 'the north' have no idea how hard it is for those in the south east. Or when those in the south east cannot understand why us up north can't just jump on subsidised transport and visit free museums and attractions to entertain the children on school holidays.

I live close to an ex pit village. There is poverty here, along with high unemployment that equals the grinding misery of inner city living. Not everything is rosier up here. Jobs are harder to find and resouces are scarce. It matters not one jot how much a property costs to b7y, rent or pay council tax on - if you do not have the money, for whatever reason, life is shit.

For Gods sake, lets pull together, not divide.

The council tax band doesn't change even when sold, here some huge properties have a low council band because they have been extended sometime since 1991. Next door has never been upgraded band wise despite being sold. Council tax is a total mess and not reflective on house size or income.

Snibble I think we should stop calling it 'foreign investment in London property' and call it 'money laundering' - because I'm damn sure that's what a lot of it was/is.

Sadly, I think Brexit - and the subsequent 'loosening of EU red tape' desperation is not going to be a powerful incentive to stop that.

It's fucking annoying.

I sort of agree with you and I live in Westminster. The tax base has got out of kilter. My council tax seems too low - westminster gets a lot of income from the business rates from huge companies based here that obviously don’t use waste services or social care like the equivalent residents do. Their employees do but they are mostly not based in WEstminster. I’m not sure how that income gets redistributed if at all but it doesn’t seem right that our council tax is as low as it is.

On the other hand we do have an issue with asset price inflation and constrained incomes which is hitting london hard because of the cost of living here.

We also have quite underfunded services in terms of social care, childcare , social housing. Massive issue with homelessness. Security costs etc.

Council tax bands were revalued in Wales without the world ending! A revaluation and redistribution which was revenue neutral would be the best outcome. Council tax was supposed to be reviewed every 5 years like business rates, but governments have been to afraid to carry it out. There was a review underway in 2007 but it was cancelled as they were afraid of the electoral implications.

And to your point OP I feel quite embarrassed when we go on holiday to N wales and the cottage owner complains to me about the once per month waste collection. Ours is twice a week.

westminster is probably not a good example to use about anything really, it's an extreme example, with really extreme wealth and extreme poverty, a hardline rich-centred tory council which was the most proactive I believe in "cleansing" the borough of poorer people when the housing ben changes gave them the opportunity.

I don't think it can be taken as the norm across london.

although I think they got a labour led council in just before the grenfell disaster.

the problems in westminster need addressing at that level, not used as evidence that everyone in london needs to be paying shit-loads of council tax.

remember we pay a premium for the major on top of the council tax rates, which I don't think is included in the figure on the sites, can't remember how much it is though.

Also on tax in London

I think we end up paying for lots of stuff like counter terrorism in the met, armed response units, security for visitors and so on,

London has a set of specific risks and so forth that are covered by the met and local ambulance services etc I'm not sure how much of that is funded centrally.

pointed out as was checking about teh premium for the mayor and saw this:

"‘The Government has refused to back the Metropolitan Police or the London Fire Brigade with the money they need and so I have been left with no choice but to propose increasing council tax to protect our city from the threats that we face.

‘I’m sensitive to the fact that council tax is a regressive form of taxation – as it hits those who can least afford to pay it the hardest, so this is certainly not a decision I take lightly.’"

In London there have been questions about more higher bands for the people who really are super rich (and not just been sittign in a property for 40 years) - hard to implement.Also, mooted and hard to implement,freeing up empty housing etc

if it's based on property value in 1991, how do they work it out for properties built after that date, presumably they use the value when it was first built and sold?

No, they use value of similar properties in the area.

They didn't actually go and value every house individually, they put like similar in same bucket and assigned a value.

So if a new 1-bed flat is built in a town, they will put it in the same bracket as other 1-beds in that town.

oh I see, thanks Snibble.

e are all trying to achieve the same thing - a happy, contented life for us and our families. It pisses me off greatly when people insist that those in 'the north' have no idea how hard it is for those in the south east. Or when those in the south east cannot understand why us up north can't just jump on subsidised transport and visit free museums and attractions to entertain the children on school holidays.

See, you’ve just done it again. For a start, we have free museums and attractions up here. The Peak District, the Dales, the Lakes, the sculpture park, city museums.

And no it’s not something you can ‘just do’. I know plenty of people who can’t do it because it’s too expensive even with subsidised transport.

I live close to an ex pit village. There is poverty here, along with high unemployment that equals the grinding misery of inner city living. Not everything is rosier up here. Jobs are harder to find and resouces are scarce. It matters not one jot how much a property costs to b7y, rent or pay council tax on - if you do not have the money, for whatever reason, life is shit.

And, you see, you’ve done it here again. You must know damn well that there isn’t a pit village in the North which isn’t easy travelling distance from a city with plenty of available jobs. In fact, so close it would be considered by most Southerners as an easy commute. And when they are working people in those areas can expect to be able to house and feed themselves pretty easily with a good amount of disposable income and a reasonable amount of space for the family they have.

In fact, you’re not saying you understand how tough it is for people on low incomes down south at all. What you’re doing is trotting out all the tired, old ‘they shut down the pit and put us all out of work’ cliches a certain type of northerner always trots out to justify giving poor people down south a damn good kicking.

So I think it’s perfectly fair to point out how selfish northerners are if they complain about paying a small amount more than southerners.

In fact, it might interest you that Londoners pay one third of all tax collected in the country despite being less than one sixth of the national population.

But when you point that out suddenly northerners start being a hell of a lot less bothered about ‘fairness’ and some people paying more than others for the same services and a lot more keen to justify people paying less and getting more.

Funny that. But of course in the interests of ‘fairness’ I’m sure you’ll support taxation being tripled for those outside London won’t you? Because of course you’re only interested in ‘fairness’ and not lining your own damn pockets right?

Realistically, council tax needs readjusting, though. Especially if the post-Brexit forecasts turn out the way they look as though they're going to turn out.

We'll be less human if we allow old people to starve in their homes in some of the sparser, more income-deprived areas.

If that income redistribution comes bound up in incendiary, hate-filled language, or with some spurious moral discourse attached, it's going to make things a lot nastier.

And I say that as someone who is so, so, so sick of the posters that keep telling me all Londoners are rich. It makes me want to scream and cry in equal measure, when I work with the extremely disadvantaged and see levels of homelessness reaching what I saw when I first moved to London in the late eighties.

My MiL lives in a rural area in Europe. It's too expensive to provide many of the services we take for granted here in the UK in rural areas in her European country. So they don't exist. In the cities, where provision is less expensive, and there are more means of raising the revenue, life is very similar to the UK. In her part of the country, water runs for an hour most days, and electricity runs every three days or so. There are two buses a day, connecting people to the main town which is many miles away. There is no local provision of health or social care outside of the main town. Needless to say, there are very few young people (I think there is one child living in the next-but-one village along).

I think it would be very sad if the UK ended up like that.

I do remember on here, when forecasts about the UK losing 10% of its GDP post-Brexit were made, people actually named MiL's European country as one example of a nation with a post-Brexit level of GDP, and waxed lyrical about how lovely it would be to live somewhere like that. I must admit, I do spend time pondering how we're going to manage sharing the reduced income around whilst simultaneously providing services at their current - barely coping - levels.

I see the lesson as 'one size does not fit all' . London's problems are very different from those of less crowded areas and cannot have the same solution. Setting north against south does not help.

Nor does massive investment in London transport while deciding that the midlands and north don't need electric railways after all, proceeding with the insanity of hs2 without looking at smarter solutions and so on.

As I admitted in an earlier post, it hasn’t been at all helpful to use London as a comparison and I wish I’d thought about this more before posting the Guardian article. The effect it’s had is to polarise the discussion about what is an entirely reasonable question. As I said before, I could have quite easily chosen many other areas of the UK and the disparities would be similar. Instead of taking this on board, the north/south arguments continue!

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?

The irony! You complain about “twats from the north” assuming that all Londoners are rich, and then make a statement like that. The only person I actually see whinging on this thread is you!

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.

“Scumbag”?? And “utter fucking scumbag”?? Why the hell do you feel the need to be so damn offensive? You make it sound like I’ve committed some sort of crime by wondering why my council tax is so extortionately high!!

Anyway, thanks for totally derailing the thread.