Unfair banding

I wish Andy Wightman all the best in trying to reform local taxation by scrapping Local Council Tax. The usual argument put up against LCT is the one of people who are asset rich but cash poor. In other words, people who live in large houses but who are perhaps existing on a pension.

Let me offer a more worrying example. My wife and I (now both pensioners) decided to downsize from our fivebedroom/three public room house to a much smaller dwelling. We built a two-bedroom/two public room single story “eco” house in the lower part of our previous garden.

The five-bedroom house from which we moved was rated Council Tax E and so we imagined, quite naively as it turned out, that our new Council Tax banding would be less. Not so. Our new two-bedroom house was rated at Band G. We appealed against this rating, without success.

Had we built on two levels (with more bedrooms), we would have been rated less. Not only is this ruling absurd, it is also manifestly unfair. And that is the point. Any taxation, local or national, must be scrupulously fair. Council Tax is not and must be reformed.

ALAN LORIMER Main Street, St Boswells