Greedy councils are coming for your cash

FRESH from threatening to shatter the freeze on council tax with rises of as much as 18 per cent, now some local authorities are turning avaricious eyes towards a so-called mansion tax. Of course, many such homes are not mansions at all – rising property values have elevated the value of even relatively modest homes to dizzying heights, particularly in Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

At the heart of the turbulence is a wrangle between Scotland’s local authorities and the Scottish Government over funding.

In an effort to halt a seemingly endless round of punishing above-inflation council tax rises, the SNP offered local authorities money direct from Holyrood in exchange for a freeze. The moratorium has held until now, giving the SNP a headline-grabbing policy and the hard-pressed public a much-needed financial break.

But the wheels have come off as restive councils maintain they have not got the money – despite efficiencies – to maintain frontline services.

Certainly, problems are mounting. Roads seem more pothole than tarmac; the fabric of too many schools is shabby while staffing levels are heading for crisis. Services for society’s most vulnerable are under genuine strain.

But the truth is that around 30 per cent of what is paid in council tax is swallowed immediately to service gold-standard public sector pensions. And the number of fat cat council executives on six-figure salaries with pension pots beyond the dreams of avarice is rising.

The public are entitled to question the motives behind all this sudden council agitation.

Is it really all about improving services for what councils – in their other-wordly argot – call ‘stakeholders’?

Or is it based on a hankering for the days when money was so plentiful that green zealotry could be indulged; when ‘fact-finding missions’ to sunnier climes were a perk; when staffing levels were generous?

The truth is that local councils, like the rest of us, have to make prudence their watchword.

It’s hard to reconcile that key goal with an attempt to squeeze further money out of people guilty of nothing more than being ambitious enough to move up the property ladder.

And a blunt reorganisation of the council tax bands would also punish people, many of whom will be elderly, whose incomes remain fixed but whose properties have risen in value.

Set all this against the backdrop of an SNP Government certain to use their new fiscal powers to raise income tax for Scots (once the small matter of the May Holyrood elections are out of the way) and this becomes a deeply concerning time for families struggling to make ends meet. Scots face Finance Secretary John Swinney coming for more of their money and now council chiefs trying the same tactic.

It cannot be long before signs must be erected at the Border warning: ‘Scotland – a high-tax country.’