Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

I shall certainly go back to the argument that I was deploying, Madam Deputy Speaker. Another criterion that the Government could use when deciding in which billing authorities a revaluation should be held could be the percentage of households receiving council tax benefit. When I was a Minister in the then Department of the Environment, one of the Treasury’s biggest concerns was the increased bills that resulted from high rates. The Government could decide to hold a revaluation in areas where the percentage of take-up of council tax benefit was relatively low. In Christchurch and in East Dorset, council tax benefit is available to far fewer households than it is nationally, and in East Devon the figure is only 13.7 per cent.