Let’s have a local community charge

HAVING read Martin Williams’s exclusive (“Taxed on property value?”, April 11) it struck me that rather than revisiting the old domestic rates system to fund council spending, could we not consider a fairer system based upon a basic standard charge for services such as bin collections, road/pavement maintenance, street lighting and the like – common services which we all use, which could be set by local councils?

This should be set at a fairly low rate (say about £300 per annum) which would be paid by everyone over school age regardless of income level. If a council had to spend more money regarding exceptional costs, for example, tidying up litter vandalism, it would increase the charge the following year to recoup the money. This would have the added advantage of focusing people’s minds that these services have a cost and could possibly lead to a change of mentality – you might be less inclined to litter if you are paying for it to be cleaned up.

We could call this the Local Community Charge.

The second part of funding for the councils would be based on ability to pay. This could be achieved by the Scottish Government increasing income tax by anything up to the devolved three per cent and earmarking this amount to be shared by the local councils, possibly based on council area population, or some other fair system could be devised.

This could also be topped up from central government grants. Although I am not an expert in local government finance, I would imagine that this would be a fairly simple system to operate.

B Bennie, Renfrew.