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Now a tax just for living in a nice area
Last updated at 13:07pm on 30.10.06
Low crime rates and good schools could see homeowners' council tax bills rise
Families who live in desirable areas face massive increases in their council tax bills under plans being drawn up by Labour, it was revealed.
Homeowners in affluent neighbourhoods with good schools, low crime rates and clean streets could be charged thousands of pounds extra than those in more run down places.
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Ministers have purchased sophisticated 'Big Brother' computer systems which calculate the desirability of an area based on the quality of local services and the types of people who live there.
The software, which will be used in the forthcoming revaluation of all 21 million homes in England, contains astonishingly detailed data on the number of households, even those who have pets, wear contact lenses or are vegetarian.
It allows inspectors to put a precise value on each home, based not only by its size and features, but its location.
The move is a further blow to homeowners who are facing the prospect of being fined for refusing to let council tax inspectors come into their homes to photograph any improvements.
Campaigners have warned that bills could rise by as much as four times in areas which are deemed 'desirable' - sending some bills spiralling from £1,000 to £4,000.
The Acorn computer system uses marketing information obtained from companies, such as credit card and stores, to create a detailed analysis of individuals and their neighbourhoods based on 287 'lifestyle variables'.
This includes information on the age, sex, ethnic profile and profession of residents in different 'localities'.
Highly personalised information about what families eat, drink, and earn is also taken into account.
Communities minister Phil Woolas has revealed the country will be divided into 10,000 'localities' for the revaluation exercise.
He admitted: "The market for dwellings may well be influenced by levels of crime and deprivation, amongst many other factors".
The new system is based on a scheme being tested in Northern Ireland, where homeowners have seen their local tax bills increase by as much as 400 per cent.
Residents there will be charged 0.78 per cent of their home's value each year - calculated in part using the location information - pushing the average bill from £1,056 to £1,492. Individual local authorities could vary the rate.
The tax will hit Northern Ireland next April, but a review of town hall finances for England, currently under way, is thought to be looking at the same system.
The Tories warned that if it was introduced in England, average bills would soar by £436 a year, with middle-class households in the South and South East worst hit.
Several councils would see average annual bills rise by more than £1,000 - including Westminster, Wandsworth, Camden, Hammersmith and Fulham, Islington, Richmond upon Thames, South Buckinghamshire, Windsor & Maidenhead, Mole Valley, St Albans, Winchester, Brentwood and Epping Forest.
In many Labour heartlands, by contrast, average bills would fall, because house price rises have been less dramatic since the last national revaluation.
Under the system, householders could be fined £1,000 for refusing to let inspectors photograph the inside and outside of their homes.
Improvements which could increase council tax bills range from a large extension, through to the number of bedrooms and parking spaces, to a scenic view.
The Tories claim ministers are quietly introducing the new scheme in Northern Ireland with the intention of rolling it out nationwide, just as Margaret Thatcher piloted the community charge in Scotland before introducing it across England and Wales.
Shadow communities secretary Caroline Spelman warned: "There is growing alarm about the Labour Government's use of Big Brother computers to hike taxes.
"First, they want to log and record every feature of your home, from double glazing to the number of bedrooms. Next, they want clip-board wielding bureaucrats to have the right to inspect your home.
"Now, Labour intends to tax you not just for every home improvement, but also the neighbourhood you live in.
"This is the hallmark of an oppressive and greedy government finding every more stealthy ways to tax working families and pensioners and trampling over privacy when it suits them."
Liberal Democrat spokesman Andrew Stunell MP added: "Your local tax should be based on your ability to pay.
"What is now being suggested will hit retired people particularly hard. They often have spent many years in their own home and would now simply become the victims of house price rises over which they have no control at all."
A review of local government including town hall finances by Sir Michael Lyons is expected within months.
But the Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain yesterday hit back at the claims describing them as "juvenile".
He said: "This is Westminster politics of the most juvenile kind. In Northern Ireland, we are introducing a new arrangement to replace one which is three decades old and clearly unfair to those on lower incomes.
"The decision to base rates on the value of homes emerged after a period of consultation and had its genesis in the last Assembly.
"It is tailor-made for Northern Ireland's different local government finance system and there is no read across for the rest of the UK."
Blair Gibbs, spokesman for the TaxPayers' Alliance added: "This new system will cause uproar amongst hard-working families up and down the country.
"It will effectively penalise ordinary people for living in good neighbourhoods. If there is less crime, people should if anything, be paying less in tax not more, as they demand less from the police.
"We need a fair system of council finance where local services are paid for locally, and where money is not siphoned off by central Government.
"This will not happen until we have true accountability where people can see what they're paying for, and can actually vote for change."
Reader views (25)
The residents in my area cannot be bothered to report petty crime and vandalism as nothing is ever done about it. Hopefully they will start or we will be overcharged! Will I get a discount for my neighbour's collection of scrap cars as well?
- Michael, London
We could get Cherie Blair to defend our human rights in court...
- Judith, Leeds, UK
I'm deeply shocked by this proposal. I have taken part in a government survey recently and fear that I'm going to be punished for doing so. During the course of this survey, I opened my house up to a clip board worker, feeling that I was doing my public duty, little did I know that they were secretly snooping to check the improvements made to my dwelling and check the views out.
If this council tax shake up is put through government, I won't be able to afford to go out so will have no problem with my streets being overtaken by yobbish youths, which will hopefully have the effect of reducing the council tax I pay.
What about my human right to a private life and what is happening to our constitution? This is coming from someone who was previously indifferent to ID cards!
- Lisa, London
So, there is absolutely no point in trying to rise above the scum line and make one's environment a nice place to live. Just what I thought - at last this really puts the Green belt, tree huggers and environmentalists firmly in their place. Yay for Labour!
- Tiggr, Torpoint, Cornwall
If this is true, which I don't believe it is, it will result in the largest amount of civil unrest this country has ever seen. The poll tax riots of the early 80's will seem like a tea party in comparison.
- Andy, Northampton
One has to wonder what is being done with all the tax collected.
I'm a fairly typical individual on about the average sallary and with typical family commitments. I did a rough calculation a few weeks ago and worked out that I pay approximately 42% of my income in various taxes.
What happens to this money? Obviously a lot goes on services etc. (insert ironic snort here) but surely this overwhelming tax burden could be reduced by increases in efficiency. Can we not breed leaner hogs rather than enlarging the pig trough?
There is an individual living in Andover with whom I have an unfortunate and unwilling association. This person, for want of a better term, sponges off the state by claiming illness and injury.
He gets his rent paid, he gets his fuel bills paid, he has money for his beer and guess who's paying for his idleness? We are!
Could we not kick such people off the benefits instead of indulging them at the expense of others?
Also would those of us actually living in deprived areas see a corresponding fall in our council tax? Of course not, the pigs want more swill!
- Tobin, Andover
So someone of modest income who bought a flat in Notting Hill 40 years ago (when it was pretty much a slum) will now be forced to move out, because there's no way they can afford the property tax on what now may be a half-million pound home.
It's a disgrace, and incomprehensible that it's the Labour party planning to send grannies and nurses into tax exile. It's bad enough that essential workers can't afford to buy in London, now they won't be able to afford to rent either, because landlords will have no choice but to pass this tax burden on.
Surely the reason for a property tax is to pay for the services that the council provides to that property, which is pretty much related to its size. If any change is needed, what's wrong with a simple tax per square meter of living area?
- Nigel, London
This system should be based on the market value of a property, pure and simple. There is no need for the level of detail the government is collecting to accurately estimate market value. For example, while limited interior information may be useful, it is not critical particularly when it is collected in such a heavy-handed manner.
Regarding fairness, a property tax is a tax on wealth... a far more equitable method of raising funds for local services than levying a tax based on current income.
- John Ryan, Newburyport
The idea of the intrusion of Big Brother is terrifying. All purchases should be made with cash so that their computer has no information on one. That they know who wears contact lenses and who is a vegetarian is the deepest intrusion into privacy. The government should not be allowed to collect this information! Photographing the inside of someone's home is something that citizens should not allow. This is very scary!
- Patricia, Florida, USA
>Please let's hope that if it comes to this lots of people, myself included, refuse to give them access.
I think you will find that Government have already introduced a tax to prevent this possibility - it will be an offence not to let these snoopers into your property.
And how long will it be before this Government introduce a tax on living in delapidated property "to encourage owners to upgrade them"??
This Government are running rings around us with their new taxes blitz. There is hardly time to complain about one new tax before another even more insane tax proposal is introduced.
How very cunning of the Government.
- James Verdonk, London
This is so typical of Labour, I hope voters will show them what they think. This jealousy of the "Haves" by the "Have-Nots" is not democratic, nor conducive to a balanced, fair economy.
The so-called "rich" are already taxed when they die, on money on which taxes have already been paid. What else?
Perhaps there should be a tax for the honour of being allowed to live in Britain, land of crime and sleaze where the Labour Government has broken just about every promise it has made. I am disgusted and will force myself to vote Conservative.
- Simon Coopers, London, England
Vote New Labour - If you have got it, we will take it away!
- Dave Davies, Basingstoke
Sophie from Cambridge,I am right behind you!
- Dany, london.....england
I agree with Peter but what alternative government do we have? Frying pan - fire? Says it all!
- Jessup, Derby, uk
So Tony Blair is trying to start a poll tax riot.
Anything Thatcher did he wants to do better.
- George, London UK
I am one of the so-called middle class silent majority that never complains. However, enough is swifly becoming enough. What is this country coming to? Not content with imposing a war on us (which the majority of us didn't want - with perfectly forseeable security consequences), not content with big-brother and nanny-state infringements on personal liberty to a degree unparalleled in history, not content with already increasing taxes - now the government proposes to effectively tax us out of existence with the latest proposals. Why bother working? Why bother having a life? Hopefully Labour will lose the next election, having effectively strangled much of the life out of this country. It's about time there was a people's protest against this madness.
- Alison, London
Simple. You refuse to pay, get fined/jailed and the council tax would then come down in the area due to increased criminal activity.
- Dereck, Eltham, London
What has happened to data protection surely this is an invasion of privacy!
- Georgina, London
I laughed in disbelief when I read this article. Letting complete strangers with a camera into my house? Are they completely mad? Perhaps they would like to publish the photos on the internet as a handy guide for housebreakers. Please let's hope that if it comes to this lots of people, myself included, refuse to give them access. Mass civil disobedience would put the kybosh on this nonsense quicker than anything.
- Sophie, Cambridge, UK
I THINK the "proposal" is that council tax would be changed so that it is levied at an annual rate of 0.78% of the value of each property, where the value is determined using the "intelligent proximity analysis" model. I'd always assumed that the current market value of the property is the
value that would be used, but I guess that's not always easy to determine. (So the "intelligent proximity analysis" model is intended to provide a proxy for the current market value?) I wonder if it wouldn't perhaps be simpler - and not in practice particularly unfair - to use the actual purchase price of the property, inflated by the local increase in property prices since the purchase?
- Richard Hancock, Bracknell, Berkshire
Simple! Get yourself a pad at Tower Hamlets, Brent or Southwark before prices escalate through the roof!
- Roy Gilbert, Solihull, England
Stop moaning and sue the current government at the European Law Court in Luxembourg.
This so-called tax is not only too rediculous for words, but also -like many other actions by so-called ministers - ILLEGAL, as the snooping and gathering of private details seriously violates basic human rights.
It would not be the first time that a British government body would be fined by the European Court: You only have to remember Customs and Excise, who initimidated UK cross-Channel shoppers, despite the single market.
- Weddigen, London SW
Perhaps we should all give up work, live on benefits and move to Hackney - which has just been voted the worst place to live in Britain.
Alternatively how about those of us with half a brain plan get our emigration forms filled out?
This country is going to rack and ruin.
- Caroline, Richmond Upon Thames, Surrey
You tax things to discourage them - smoking, drinking, driving... but now I can only foresee an anarchist's dream as communities from hell are encouraged.
- Charles Siu, London, UK
This government looks like it's about to tax people in desirable areas to pay for its failure in less desirable areas! This government is a joke. This country needs a new government as soon as possible - get this dangerous tax and waste team out - now!
- Peter, Collier's Wood, London
