Council Tax

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I recognise my noble friend’s interest on this issue and I reassure him that his strong comments will be fed back to the department. However, he will know what I am about to say: creating new bands would also require a revaluation, both to determine which properties might be captured by those bands and to ensure a common valuation approach to all properties. Given that council tax income is not redistributed, new bands for the highest value properties would yield little extra money in areas where house prices are lower and demand for services may be higher.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate, referred to the already high levels of council tax arrears. Have the Government made an assessment of what impact the £20 cut to universal credit is going to make on increasing those levels of arrears?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

No, we have not made any assessment of that.