Council tax is the most unpopular tax in Britain. Lagging behind in the unpopularity stakes are stamp duty and inheritance tax. What do they have in common ? All are taxes on property that have soared by stealth since 1997, collectively having doubled their tax take from £16 billion to £34 billion.

The picture on council tax isn’t going to get prettier in a hurry. Pensioners are being jailed for refusing to pay their bills. The Local Government Association have predicted a shortfall in council finances, meaning another hike in bills next April. Despite its delay, the spectre of council tax revaluation and rebanding continues to haunt the Government.

It didn’t used to be this way. As the Government noted in its 1998 Local Government White Paper, ‘the council tax is working well as a local tax. It has been widely accepted and is generally very well understood’. But today, the typical Band D hit has exceeded the psychological level of £100 a month from one’s tax-home pay or pension. Unlike excise or income taxes, residents are billed directly, making it a very visible tax.

Yet the Government’s decision to pre-empt Lyons and delay (rather than cancel) the council tax revaluation will make the tortuous process even more painful. The original 1992 valuation simply placed properties into one of eight bands and the banding structure was known at the time of the valuation process. This time round, a decision on bands – including the politically explosive issue of rebanding – is unlikely to be decided by the time of the valuation assessments. As a result, the Valuation Office Agency has decided it needs to calculate a numerical valuation for every home - so it can then be banded later. The revaluation process will be more expensive, and far more pieces of information need to be gathered.

This helps explain the Agency’s decision to buy in the controversial American system of ‘Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal’. It will collate 17 different ‘dwelling house codes’ and 66 ‘value significance codes’ on homes – including the number of bedrooms, garage spaces, and presence of a greenhouse, conservatory, large patio or scenic view. These attributes in turn will influence the valuation, banding and final bill – or in other words, tax ‘a room with a view’. And to gather this information, unlike the previous valuation, invasive inspectors will need to enter many homes. Existing, rarely-used laws allow the Agency to fine households who refuse to let in inspectors. Reform of local government finance risks becoming a slow motion car crash.

Simply adopting an alternative system of local taxation is not necessarily a panacea – remember the poll tax, a response to a looming rates revaluation. Whereas the poll tax was controversial for having no direct connection with ability to pay, proposals like a local income tax swing to the other extreme, seeking to redistribute wealth irrespective of the provision of local services. Similarly, moving to a more ‘progressive’ council tax system via introducing higher bands or larger band multipliers would result in howls of anguish from middle England.

The council tax backlash reflects a sense of resentment against higher taxes without clear improvements in public services. But it also exposes a deeper confusion about who exactly is responsible for local tax-and-spend decisions. An ICM survey last year, on who people held liable for high council tax, found that a third blamed the Government, one in four accused their local councils, whilst one in five didn’t know. There is no clear ‘winner’ in this yearly blame game.

Reforms will only carry favour if they address not only the overall burden of taxation, but also make local services and councils more accountable to local people. Local residents face a bewildering and costly range of regional and central agencies that run their lives, and lack the ability to influence those agencies. The public want to know who’s running the show, so they can kick those out who tax too much and don’t deliver.

Cllr Sheridan Westlake

More may be to come. Surrey Ambulance Trust may be enveloped into one of 11 regional trusts. The abolition of district or county councils in Surrey is also on the Whitehall agenda, making space for the South East regional assembly to take ‘strategic’ decisions.

There’s a trend here. The Labour Government is taking decision-making away from local people, and passing it upwards to unelected and costly quangos.  Regionalisation is centralising – it allows Whitehall bureaucrats – in the form of the Government Office of the South East - to interfere even more and dictate local priorities to an arbitrary ‘region’ covering 8 million people.

If councils like Waverley, Guildford or Surrey don’t deliver, voters can ‘kick the rascals out’. The same cannot be said of John Prescott’s regional empires, which have no mandate, no accountability and no legitimacy.

Cllr Sheridan Westlake