Anyone else in the South East worried about Andy Burnham bringing in a land tax?

[Beachbooks]

With it looking likely that Andy Burnhan will be the next PM, I was interested to see if anyone else in London / the south east were worried about potential tax raises specifically around the land tax rather than stamp duty ?

A lot of my friends who live locally are worrying that he will make the land tax for the South East so high in proportion to other areas of the UK that it will be financially very difficult to afford but then also extremely difficult to sell!!

BTW we have very standard house and garden but we live in an expensive area

That seems to be a quite useful bargaining point 'We'll reduce the fees for EU students (so we get more in and keep the universities afloat and vaguely competitive), you do the same for UK students'.

'The papers' - in your case, the Telegraph - aren't exactly going to include any progress in respect of a reciprocal arrangement or greater freedom to work/study in the EU if it were to be available - and in any case, somebody has to make the first offer in a negotiation and show they actually mean it; otherwise you get something more akin to Trump 'there's a great deal, a beautiful deal, it'll all be great' and the other party saying 'nope, not heard any of that and in any case, we're not selling/stopping/whatever'.

I did obviously check all the other papers etc ( hence the plural ) to see if there was a similar offer for U.K. students
There isn’t
apart from re entry into the Erasmus programme. U.K. students pay the same as their host countries for one year of study

The EU really wanted this, they’ll push on it for any deal.

Thank you @poetryandwine it sounds as though they won't be able to do it in Wales, stamp duty is a devolved power but council tax isn't. Also at the quoted rates for the new tax I think they would in most cases make less money than they do now. At the rate of about 0.5% annually they would get £4000 from us, but at the moment we pay £5,500. Not for a mansion, a largish 4 bedroom house with a big garden. The highest tax band here is for any house that was worth more than £440,000 in 2003, which ours just was, so we pay as much as a stately home.

They have the option to rent out rooms?

I thought LVT should be based on LAND value, so the more land you own the more you pay? But if we make the property value the starting point, then adjustments can be made if the person doesn"t earn much or earn anything, a bit like single person CT discount but based on household income, realistically though I think there are very few people in genuinely big luxurious houses that don"t have an income from stocks/pension/inheritance etc.
The problem starts when a family of six live in a big house they inherited on benefits, I suppose they get a free cash bonus for being "poor"? Everything he tries is going to be shambolic, they need to call an election before throwing out plans that no one voted for.

The reality is that too many people go to Uni, many are not at the academic level to enter a real University, some Uni"s just need to go bust unfortunately, the average Reform voter is smart enough to know that 50k for a bit of paper is not a good value deal so there will be no chance of bending the knee any time soon to the EU to get more students into debt.

Land value is complex. As already discussed, additional taxation will lower it just as removing planning restrictions can increase it. However, it can also be altered by private contract especially a freeholder with covenants not to build at all on it, can mean the value is garden land only aka agricultural land value. There are quite a few anomalous restrictive covenants kicking around and ancient land rights that could be freed up and of course, planning freedom will release a lot of it. However, sometimes there are reasons for restrictive covenants. The neighbour at the end of my road in London has a very big garden, apparently there was an underground stream and it was earmarked as a flood risk to build there. Now whether the demand for housing is going to respect things like flood risks and habitats etc is up for discussion.
I think the only way to build successfully is to devolve and have the local authorities and builders and whole communities coming up with clear plans where the whole community can benefit and where there are real promises for infrastructure improvements. I think there may be some such plans in the making in the Cambridge corridor for example. I am not sure how far they got with that in the end. But so far, Labour are massively behind on building the houses they promised in the manifesto. You cannot just build blindly, it requires clear buy in from communities and long term strategy and cannot be subject to sudden PM changes or party changes. That is why it needs devolution at the local level and private state partnerships.

I think we need to put the "Demand for housing" thing to bed, it is a white elephant designed to distract from the real elephant in the room, houses are overpriced due to the largest credit bubble in history, whether a bit of land in London gets used for housing or not isn"t really here nor there TBH, new-build sales in London were down 60% recently.

https://invezz.com/news/2026/06/29/uk-mortgage-lending-weakens-in-may/

I suspect that Labour and many of their supporters would consider that a legitimate position. Expecting single-occupancy homeowners who have planned ahead, done the right things and worked to minimise their reliance on the state to take in a lodger to use their home more "efficiently". If they choose not to, they should be castigated for their selfishness and hit with higher taxes for failing to be more efficient. We'll also conveniently ignore whether there are suitable, affordable homes for them to move into. Not our problem.

IMO, it's consistent with Labour's view that individuals don't really own anything. They are merely in possession of assets through the benevolence of the state, assets that can be eroded by a thousand little cuts at will. So I guess it's rather naïve to expect to have any real control over the home you thought you had acquired by trading your labour for income.

The welfare state especially under Labour, is a complete bastardisation of the principles on which the modern welfare state was founded.

"The State, in organising security, should not stifle incentive, opportunity and responsibility; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family."

William Beveridge

From his 1942 report, widely regarded as the blueprint for the welfare state.

He would be turning in his grave.

Pat McFadden - every meeting is about who we can tax more.

Not so much ‘who’ because it’s always the same people
More a case of ‘how’

True

Maybe Labour will ask them to take in a refugee for a tax discount? I agree with what you say though, not everyone will want a student in their back bedroom to pay a tax, although many younger people are now doing it to pay their mortgage debt I hear? I suppose the thinking is that if you are able to run a big house you are able to do some part-time work to pay your taxes?

When Bliar and Broon started blowing the biggest property bubble in history that would price future generations out of home ownership Labour left their founding values long behind, the older people being asked to pay some tax now bought their house for two times wages, they had it much easier and fairer TBH.

Just more evidence of why they are no longer the party of workers. It's a complete abdication of their responsibility to both working people and those on benefits. They seem hell-bent on discouraging productivity, aspiration and independence, whilst rewarding inefficiency and ever-increasing dependency.

Yes it’s an absolute joke

Looking at this from a historical perspective
This is nothing new
but more importantly many pensioners, particularly, already do this.
If they are already renting out rooms to get by this isn’t the answer

The 1960s to 1990s: Lodging plummeted as homeownership surged from 42% in 1961 to peak at 71% by 2003. Rising incomes and the stigma of having "strangers" in the home meant fewer homeowners took in lodgers.

The Late 2000s & 2010s: The trend reversed. In 2009, only 1.4% of homeowners let out a spare room, but this nearly doubled to 2.7% following the financial crisis. The government's Rent a Room Scheme provided tax-free thresholds to encourage the practice.

The 2020s: Economic pressures led to a surge of pensioners and retirees acting as live-in landlords, increasing threefold between 2015 and 2025. Data from SpareRoom indicates that around 43% of lodger landlords are now retired, using the extra income to cover day-to-day bills and top up pensions.

Yes the problem is about half the threads on here are filled with posts wanting the same thing. More taxes for someone else.

Why can’t every meeting be how can we get more work for people, and more into that work

It’s such a bad world view no wonder young people are being hit by higher unemployment.

Interesting stats. Thanks.

Reform are the only solution, less people in the country, more people in work.

Agree and supporting a policy just because you personally won’t be affected or will be better off whilst acknowledging others won’t be is pure envy
Particular if there’s a complete lack of awareness or indeed care how the economy as a whole will or may be affected

Labour has a track record for this very recently and
needs to start making the figures and potential fallout stack up

Isn"t the idea that working people in smaller flats who are more economically active ( working and buying) pay less tax?

The SE is not homogenous or has wonderful facilities everywhere! Council tax is about services, so why should it be based on a finger in the air value! Wage stagnation outside of London is dire, wages often better in Manchester and Newcastle than where I live. We already have a poverty stricken county council, not sure how much more people in the locale can take, as roads, constant development, no support facilities, lack of employment and too many failing schools is hitting hard. As for facilities, where are they? HIgh streets in the towns are dead or full of the same money laundering businesses as elsewhere! I worked supporting tenants and in this so called propsperous SE county we have 5 of the areas of highest social deprivation and a significant number of schools in the bottom 50 of achievement! The North / South divide is one politicians love to spout, but sadly is no longer true in so many places.

I thought it worth looking up
My parents bought a 3 bed terrace in 1966
both my brother and I lived there too with my parents
They had two lodgers, I remember them well

So When the subject came up I wondered if my parents were in the minority and how it is now.

I’m hoping those pensioners today are renting to people they know well because I’d worry as they are a vulnerable group