Council tax woes (From Harrow Times)

Council tax woes

11:04am Thursday 25th September 2003

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DESPITE the dramas of the Hutton inquiry, council tax has suddenly shot to the top of the political agenda, not just in Harrow but across the country, and there is the unmistakable whiff of a popular uprising in the autumn air.

In this borough, campaigners are fighting to persuade the council to curb tax increases next year, fearing a repeat of the swingeing rise imposed in April. The Harrow Council Tax Campaign hopes that a massive upswell of public opinion, with thousands of taxpayers speaking with one voice, will frighten the council into keeping next year's rise within the rate of inflation.

There is no talk here (yet) of running candidates on a tax-curbing ticket, but one correspondent to this newspaper this week raises, ever so gently, the idea of a tax strike.

But elsewhere, things have already gone a lot further. In the traditionally radical West Country, hundreds of retired people who have seen the increase in their pensions more than wiped out by council tax rises, are openly declaring that they will refuse to pay any further rises and are challenging their local authorities to drag them before the courts, and challenging the courts to throw them into prison.

And in Kent, the county council is bowing to a similar show of grey power by looking at the possibility of pegging tax rises for the elderly to inflation, however much everyone else has to pay.

Nationally, the Government, apparently terrified of not just civil disobedience but civil unrest as angry council tax payers revolt, is warning local authorities that they will face "tough consequences", including capping, if they impose "unreasonable" tax increases next year.

One idea being considered by local government minister Nick Raynsford is to force councils to hold referendums to get public approval for any increase above twice the rate of inflation. Let's hope they are fairer than the rigged informal plebiscite held by Harrow Council this year.

But whatever the Government decides, an unstoppable tide of popular anger is threatening to sweep away those town hall autocrats who think they know what is best for the people they were elected to serve.

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