Council tax rises could be largely avoided if council got more efficient

Geoff Back from the TaxPayers alliance explains why council inefficiency needs to be improved for tax savings.

Transcript

00:00Council tax has apparently become more expensive indeed of course we look at

00:04our bills and we see it's gone up quite quite a lot in recent years. Now the

00:08reason for that are that sort of council services which of course require a lot

00:12of labour and of course the uncosts and indeed the sort of the factors for

00:16many local authorities they depend upon what they get from government which has

00:19dropped quite dramatically. They've tried to sort of make up the

00:23difference as much as they can by putting up council tax because as I say

00:26it's a major sort of source of revenue. Now the argument about sort of are we

00:31sort of getting value for what we pay for and is it too expensive? Local

00:36councils face mounting pressures, rising inflation, increased demand for services

00:41like social care and homelessness support and the ongoing cost-of-living

00:46crisis are significantly impacting their budgets. This has led to difficult

00:51choices such as increasing council tax, raising fees and potentially cutting

00:56valued services. Additionally government funding cuts and increasing energy

01:01costs further strain council finances forcing them to make tough decisions

01:06about to allocate limited resources effectively. Taxes are already going up

01:13across the board in many areas it's going to really really harm local

01:17residents. In terms of what councils should do instead they need to look

01:20internally the brutal reality of local government over the last 15, 20, 25 years

01:25and particularly since pandemic is that productivity has plunged catastrophically.

01:30They are not producing as much work as they used to. That's probably a mixture

01:34of factors it could do with working from home but in particular I think it's as a

01:38result of the increase in the number of staff and a fall in the standards

01:42expected of those staff from town hall bosses so they need to they need to be

01:46demanding much much more from their staff. Top-level salaries in particular

01:51but I think the ultimate simple fact is that council staff are not doing as much

01:55work as they used to and that means that services are not being delivered

01:58properly with resources they already have.