Though Cowards Flinch

Most people will probably think that Labour’s freeze on council tax rises in its eight London boroughs, announced in October, is just another grandiose stunt to win votes. But if we were one of those having our council tax frozen, would we care?

Council tax, paid by all of us, is a relatively regressive tax which hits plenty of workers and families who can ill-afford it. Like mine. It is not related to earnings, and the highest band is a poxy £320,000 worth of property.

Moreover, whatever one might say about New Labour’s political opportunism, there is still less that can be said in praise of the case of Hammersmith and Fulham, a Tory London borough which has announced a cut of 3%, presumably to be paid for by laying off as many workers and cutting as many services as they can get away with, judging by the industrial unrest there earlier this year.

Least praiseworthy of all will be the cacophany of Tory voices (and the odd ally in pressure groups) screaming about council tax rises being a fault of central government incompetence or grant cuts or whatever else they can dream up. Here in Canterbury, our own Tories got their complaints in even before the settlement was announced, two weeks ago, to declaim on how rises were prompted by Labour cuts.

As for here in Kent, for this fiscal year, both Medway and Canterbury announced above inflation rises in council tax – Medway being 4.7% and Canterbury being 4.5%, whilst the government had increased each of their allowances, and the RPI for the twelve months preceding their announcements had been 0.1%.

For the next fiscal year, rises in the central grant have now been announced – whilst RPI has fallen further still to -0.8% in the 12 months up to today. The overall figure is now some £76.2 billion, an increase on last year’s £73 billion-odds, with Kent County Council getting a 3.2% rise, Thanet getting a 1.1% rise and Dover getting a 0.5% rise. This years Council Tax rises won’t be set until February, though it’s worth pointing out that, faced with a similar increase in its grant last year, Conservative-controlled KCC opted for a 2.44% rise at a time when inflation for the previous twelve months averaged zero.

Meanwhile, Canterbury City Council is attempting to shave £3.5million off its budget largely through a one-time sale of city assets, a smaller amount than the £6million it lost in Icelandic banks and has not yet recovered (though in the interest of full disclosure, council leader John Gilbey is loudly proclaiming to everyone who’ll listen that they will recover £5.2million of it). Probably not the £30 million spent on demolishing and rebuilding the Marlowe Theatre for a measly extra 200 seats though, eh John?

This is one of the problems with a lot of the disparate political activism on a local level; the Save Our Westgate Hall group might get what it wants – Westgate Hall, an important community centre, may not be demolished to make way for parking spaces – but what happens when it’s paid for through a stonking rise in Council Tax? This is where a more generalised (i.e. party-orientated) political activism has supreme advantages over one hit wonder campaigns. You can actually take over the Council.

Though of course local Labour, who have been reduced to two councillors in recent years, have advanced no strategy to sort the Council budget should they get elected. No surprises there then. Gotta love local politics.