Elderly across Haringey will suffer when council tax bills rocket again 02/11/05

Tottenham Conservatives have warned that elderly council tax payers across Haringey face another hammering from Tony Blair's Labour government as ministers slap new spending burdens on hard-pressed local authorities.

Justin Hinchcliffe, from Haringey Conservatives, seized on a report published by the Local Government Association, entitled 'Beyond the Black Hole', which spotlighted an expected 10 per cent hike in council tax levies next April, which on a Band D property, would take the average annual bill to 1,335 - an extra 121 a year.

With the inflation-busting rises needed to plug a 2.2 billion gap in council budgets, LGA chief Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart protested: "The Government is making ever more legislative and policy demands on councils without providing an equivalent level of funding. It is very unreasonable for the Government to think it can simply force the council tax payer to pick up the bill."

Commenting, Mr Hinchcliffe tore into the way the Chancellor and other Labour ministers have manipulated council and other tax rates in advance of elections, then penalise voters with renewed increased stealth levies after polling day.

Pointing out that in April 2001, council tax rates saw an average increase of just 6.4 per cent, while after the general election in that year, bills rose by 8.3 per cent in April 2002, and by 12.9 per cent the following year, he signalled that the same tactics were being used in the wake of this year's election. Said Justin Hinchcliffe: "Gordon Brown is back to his old trick of keeping council taxes down before a general election, and hiking them up after. Labour have turned council tax into a punishing stealth tax - engineered by Whitehall, but with councils taking the blame when bills hit the doorstep."

He went on: "I am concerned that the elderly, already facing soaring heating bills this winter, will not be able to pay their council tax demands. Labour's taxes have hit not only hard-working families, but also some of the most vulnerable people in our society."

ENDS.