While it may be true that historically “Councils’ income comes mainly in Whitehall grant” (Editorial, 27 January) this has been changing in recent years. Revenue support grant is scheduled to disappear, such that councils will have to increasingly rely on council tax, which is effectively restricted to a 2% increase, and business rates, which yield hugely different amounts in different areas. It’s unclear what steps, if any, the government intends to take to redress this imbalance. Under what passes for what it describes as devolution there is a real risk of this government passing the buck without passing the bucks.
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords
• Your editorial does not mention the biggest scandal of our present domestic rates system – the capping of the top band at a level that leaves very wealthy homeowners paying only as much as the moderately well-off. A system intended to be fair now takes proportionally more from the poorer than the richer residents, and deprives councils of a valuable source of revenue.
Fay Marshall
Brighton
• By all means reform the way local government is financed, but start with council tax. It is far too regressive. The answer, of course, is more bands (better still, a set percentage of the value of the property) and a long overdue revaluation (last done in 1991). More bands and a revaluation merely redistributes the council tax burden with, in all likelihood, there being more winners than losers. In addition, a fairer tax on property incorporates an element of wealth tax, probably the only one that is neither intrusive nor cumbersome to collect. What’s not to like? Time for courage from our political class. And please, no more crocodile tears for “asset rich/income poor” widows.
Yugo Kovach
Winterborne Houghton, Dorset
• Your editorial’s generalisation that “most fit adults put up with the closure of the local library [etc] as a sad but minor inconvenience” and that “No one, ever, wants to talk about remote, unglamorous, local government funding” doesn’t tally with what people do want to talk about here in Oxford and Oxfordshire. On a daily basis local people from all sorts of backgrounds are raising their voices against the closure of children’s centres and facilities for the elderly, the loss of youth centres, health cuts, chronic and worsening social and community care, shrinking education budgets, increased air pollution, housing shortages, library closures, incursions into the green belt, and much more.
Bruce Ross-Smith
Oxford
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