Finance Secretary John Swinney has set Scotland’s 32 local authorities a deadline of 2 February to decide whether or not to accept a financial settlement he hopes will underpin a further year of the...
District councils are calling for the same freedoms to increase council tax as social care authorities in order to boost prevention and tackle health inequalities.
The debate over council reserves hasn’t gone away since Eric Pickles left the Department for Communities and Local Government. But council leaders are beginning to strike back.
Councils have called for additional powers to charge developers council tax if they let planning permission expire without completing construction of new homes.
Local government funding cuts are to ease in the years to 2019/20 compared to the last parliament and will be more evenly distributed across authorities, an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal...
Scotland’s council tax system should be replaced with a new levy designed to be fairer, more progressive and which gives greater powers to local communities, a landmark report has concluded.
People forced out of their homes by flooding will not be charged council tax until they can return to their properties, local government secretary Greg Clark has announced.
The government has launched a review of the localisation of council tax support that will consider the impact of the reform on local government finance and whether further reforms should be made to...
Two-thirds of Scots want to replace the council tax, according to an online poll run by the cross-party Commission on Local Tax Reform set up by the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish...
An analysis by the Scottish Parliament has found the funding provided by the Scottish Government to local authorities for the seven-year council tax freeze has exceeded the amount of revenue that...
If the forthcoming government Spending Review was able to protect three key areas of local government funding, councils would be better placed to respond to a range of cost pressures
The number of debt recovery cases sent by local councils to bailiffs has increased by one-sixth in just over two years, figures from the Money Advice Trust have revealed.
The Local Government Association has called on the government to give unpaid carers to be given a £100 council tax reduction in recognition of their vital role in the “chronically-...
Chancellor George Osborne has been urged to use this week’s Budget to introduce reforms to the UK’s “creaking and increasingly incoherent tax system” by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Local government secretary Greg Clark has said he will make the case for greater certainty in council funding settlements as the government prepares for the Spending Review.
CIPFA has called for an end to the council tax freeze which has been in place in Scotland since 2007, and for Scottish councils to be given the freedom to raise and set local taxes.
Ministers should introduce a series of three-year pilots to test local government finance reforms in order to develop models for increased council autonomy that could be rolled out across England,...
Leaders of the commission looking for a replacement for the council tax in Scotland believe they could yet achieve a broad political consensus ahead of next May’s Scottish Parliament elections.
The new Conservative government has today been urged to implement wholesale reform to local taxation by abolishing council tax bands and replacing them with a flat rate levy on property values, set...
The next government must reform council tax in England to end the ‘absurd situation’ of basing it on relative values in 1991, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said.
A majority of people would support an increase in council tax if the additional funding was used to make local services more responsive and tailored to individual needs, a poll has found.
