Labours left wing is planning a campaign to force the Government to increase council tax on high-price homes.
If the campaign, due to start in the autumn, were to succeed, there would be a major increase in valuation work for the property industry.
The crusade, led by the left-wing New Policy Institute thinktank, includes the civil service union PCS, 155 local councils and a clutch of Labour MPs, including Shona McIsaac, Lynne Jones, Dennis Skinner and former solicitor-general Ross Cranston QC.
The Council Tax Reform campaign is proposing more bands at the top and the bottom and making the tax for expensive houses a percentage of the propertys value.
NPIs Andrew Harrop, who is co-ordinating the campaign, said: “We want to change the way that the tax works, to make it closer in relation to the value of the property. “For homes worth over £500,000, we would want to see it as a percentage, between 1/2% and 1%, of the propertys value.”
The campaign will take advantage of the Governments commitment to a national revaluation of council tax bands, which is expected to start in 2005, by pushing for an overhaul of the entire system. The proposal would require the number of valuations to increase dramatically.
Louise McConnachie, head of the RICS residential faculty, said: “It would require a bespoke valuation for each property worth more than £500,000. Thats a considerable number of properties, especially in the South. In Kensington and Chelsea, Belgravia or Mayfair, £500,000 would be the norm rather than the exception. It would mean an awful lot of work for valuers.”
Harrop said the campaign would start in earnest in October: “It makes sense for reform to go hand-in-hand with the Governments planned revaluation. Weve got a lot of support in the councils and among MPs. The next stage is to get them to start pushing for a change. As soon as the MPs come back from recess things will really get going.”
He added: “We want to make people who own high-value property pay more, while those who live in low-value homes pay less. At the moment, council tax is deeply regressive. The amount paid by owners of expensive properties is only three times as much as the lowest band, even though the houses are worth eight times as much.”
Council tax raised more than £15bn for local government over the financial year 2000-2001.
EGi News 18/08/01
