If you watched Wealden District Council’s recent Full Council meeting on February 21st, 2024, you may recall a debate around a Cabinet recommendation to make changes to the vacant property/empty homes council tax charges as well as apply council tax premiums to second homes.
It was on the agenda under item 14 on the call over list and would not ordinarily have been debated but would have been voted through en bloc along with other items on the list. That is, unless it was reserved for debate.
I had concerns about the process by which the item had appeared on the agenda, specifically around the consequences for residents (and the Council) of implementing such a strategy. It was (and continues to be) my opinion that this policy is misguided, ill thought through and, given the scarcity of information contained within the Full Council agenda, looks little more than yet another way to tax residents. To be clear, it’s Central Government that permits these taxes to be levied but it’s a District Council Decision as to whether the policy is implemented within Wealden (and to what extent). This was a discretionary choice.
The full report is shown on the right.
The agenda item was there for a vote of Full Council. My view was that it was premature to vote on the issue as we did not have the information to understand the consequences and I therefore argued that the decision (ie the vote) should be delayed so that the policy, including its reasoning and impacts could be interrogated at the Audit, Finance and Governance Committee meeting on March 20th, 2024.
What followed was a debate about the merits of deferring the item. My argument was primarily one of governance, scrutiny, and transparency in decision making (something the Council committed to in its Council Strategy).
The counterarguments put forward centered around the expediency of the process (ie the council tax changes could not be implemented during a tax year). One councillor arguing for the tax increase made the (what I consider to be extraordinary) point that “This is not something that is going to affect vast amounts of people. It’s going to affect, I don’t know whether we have figures but it’s a pretty small number of people”
“This is not something that is going to affect vast amounts of people. It’s going to affect, I don’t know whether we have figures, but it’s a pretty small number of people“
Councillor quote from meeting Feb 21st 2024
That, to my mind, is poor reasoning for doing something that will have a huge financial impact on those people. I have to say I’m very disappointed with such sloppy logic being advanced in a debate.
For context, this change would levy (according to the unscrutinised and untested figures) approximately £700,000 in Council Tax from the affected group yet only 9% of this (~£63,000) accrue to Wealden with the majority going to ESCC, the Sussex PCC, Fire Authority etc.
There is also the potential for a range of unintended consequences to affect the Council but since it didn’t come to a scrutiny committee, we will have to deal with them as they occur rather than take a proactive step to address potential issues first.
Unfortunately, in respect of the amended motion, the Council voted not to bring the matter to a scrutiny committee to be fully investigated before implementation. It was, in my view, the wrong decision, but I was pleased to see that the vote was a very narrow one, with 20 councillors voting against scrutiny and 18 votes in favour of scrutinising a decision to charge property owners financially punitive “premiums” on their council tax. I’ll link to the minutes of the meeting as it was a recorded vote but they’re not available at the time of writing.