Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the cost pressures on local authorities, and whether in the light of that assessment they have plans to give local authorities greater freedoms to raise income locally by removing the requirement to hold referendums before raising Council Tax above two per cent.

Councils account for around a quarter of all public spending and have an important role to play in tackling the deficit. The 2015 Spending Review looked across all local government spending and as a result the Government provided a £3.5 billion package to tackle the pressures of adult social care. This included giving councils the additional freedom to introduce an adult social care precept worth 2 per cent, which could raise nearly £2billion by 2019-20. The Government remains committed to working with local authorities to keep council tax low for hard-working families and set out its proposals for council tax referendum principles for 2017-18 in the Local Government Finance Settlement Technical Consultation, published on 15 September 2016.