Local Government and Housing

COUNCIL TAX

• The average Band D bill in England is £1,214 in 2005-06– an increase of 76 per cent (+£525) since Labour came to power, up from £689 in 1997-98.

• Council tax receipts across Britain have risen by £9 billion since 1997. This is equivalent to almost 3 per cent on the basic rate of income tax.

• A third of the increase in the basic state pension has been snatched back in higher council tax for the typical pensioner couple.

• Conservative councils cost less, charging an estimated £74 a year less on Band D bills than Labour councils, and £83 less than Liberal Democrat councils, in England in 2005-
06.

• The highest council tax in Britain is in Tony Blair’s Sedgefield – with a Labour MP, Labour district council and Labour county council, charging £1,428 on Band D in 2005-06.

• If council tax continues to soar at the same rate as it has under Tony Blair, it would hit £2,000 a year if Labour won a third term, thanks to more fiddled funding, a rigged council tax revaluation and new council tax bands.

HOUSING

• The average home buyer is paying £950 extra in stamp duty under Labour.

• The amount of new social housing being built has plummeted by 41 per cent in England under Labour.

• Labour are planning to bulldoze 400,000 homes in the north, while building the equivalent of 26 towns the size of Slough on England’s green fields.

• The number of people living in B&Bs has almost doubled, and homelessness is up a third.

COSTLY BUREAUCRACY

• The unelected regional chambers (the self-styled ‘regional assemblies’) are costing taxpayers £30 million a year, despite the fact that regional assemblies were decisively rejected in a referendum in the North East in November 2004.

• The running costs of the Government Offices for the Regions have increased by 44 per cent since 1997.

• A net total of £544 million of National Lottery money and £31 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent on the failed Millennium Dome.

CONSERVATIVE ACTION

• Conservatives will halt Labour’s third-term council tax rises. We will block plans for higher council tax bands on middle England and prevent the forthcoming revaluation being used to increase council tax further by stealth.

• We will cut council tax for older people, by introducing an automatic 50 per cent discount for the 65s and over, whilst protecting existing pensioner benefits.

• We will cut the unfunded red tape, regulations and directives on local authorities that have caused council tax to go through the roof.

• Conservatives will scale back the bloated inspection regime in local government, saving £1 billion a year.

• Conservatives will give local communities greater powers to protect their green fields and Green Belt from unwanted and unsustainable development.

• Conservatives will give local people a greater say on local planning, including on controversial new mobile phone masts and wind farm developments.

• Conservatives will scrap Labour’s bloated tiers of regional bureaucracy and give greater powers to local councils.

Promoted by G A Nichols on behalf of Andrew Turner, both of 58 The Mall, Carisbrooke Road, Newport, Isle of Wight, PO30 1BW and by
Island Webservices, 2 Highwood Lane, Rookley, Ventnor, Isle of Wight, PO38 3NN