Letter: Why Not Introduce Additional Council Tax Bands?

Published on: 8 Feb, 2025
Updated on: 8 Feb, 2025

From David Roberts

In response to: SCC Conservatives Rail Against Proposal to Ask Highest Council Tax Payers to Pay More

I have never understood the council tax property valuation problem.

Why not just introduce additional bands (I, J and K, for instance) on houses valued at more than, say, £500,000 in 1991 (about £2.6 million today)? There are thousands of large properties that could and should pay more.

Wales already has a Band I, introduced after devolution in 2003. But in England, successive governments have ducked three times out of conducting the scheduled ten-yearly revision of property values, throwing the whole system into disrepute. First, it was Blair’s foot-and-mouth crisis, next it was Cameron’s financial crash, and finally it was Johnson’s Covid pandemic. Excuses, excuses…

The result in Surrey is that the top band, H, now cuts in on any house worth more than about £1.6 million – from ordinary suburban homes to the many vast mansions owned by billionaire oligarchs. How can this possibly be fair?