Council Tax and Business Rates

The bleak future of local government finance is laid for the Scrutiny Committee in a recent presentation.  The presentation will go forward tomorrow.

Among the points I found of interest were the growing relative importance of Council Tax as government grant is phased out.  Those authorities who chose to freeze, or even cut, Council Tax will find that they can no longer recover that revenue.  It is permanently lost because there is an effective cap on percentage increases, now about 4%.  I have explained this trend before. 

The second thing that strikes me is the idea of London pool for business rates, which sounds attractive but hard to make work in practice.  I would expect an on the ball administration to be out in front on this issue, explaining it and trying to create support for it.  Sadly, Cllr Muhammed Butt does not seem to have spotted the importance of this.  Let us hope he does in so time.