Local CommunitiesStrong Local Communities |
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Axe the unfair Council Tax – Local Income Tax is fair and affordableOn top of the Chancellor’s plans to increase Council Tax yet again, Council Tax revaluation in England in 2007 threatens one in three households with huge and arbitrary rises, as is already happening in Wales. The Council Tax penalises pensioners and people on low incomes, who pay a far higher proportion of their income in Council Tax than the very rich. A Local Income Tax is based very simply on the ability to pay. It would be run through the existing Inland Revenue Income Tax mechanism, so saving hundreds of millions of pounds by abolishing Council Tax administration. The typical household will save around £450 per year, and eight out of ten pensioners will have lower bills. |
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Affordable homesWe will help tackle the affordable housing crisis by making available public sector land currently owned by the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Health and English Partnerships, sufficient to build 100,000 more homes both for rent and for affordable purchase through shared ownership schemes for local people. We will reform VAT to encourage developers to repair and reuse empty buildings and brownfield land, rather than building on greenfields and eroding the countryside. We will take 150,000 homebuyers a year out of paying stamp duty altogether, by raising the threshold to £150,000. In areas where second homes are overwhelming the local housing market, we will require people to get planning permission before turning another full-time home into a holiday home. |
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Art, heritage and sportLiberal Democrats have a proud tradition of championing the arts, culture and heritage, which successive governments have undervalued. This Government’s move towards greater state interference in the arts has threatened to stifle artistic freedom. We will restore the National Lottery funds’ independence, requiring the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to separate clearly government spending from independently determined Lottery spending in its annual reports. We will end Labour’s freeze in the core Arts Council budget, guaranteeing that growth in core arts funding at least matches inflation. We will help protect the built environment by reducing VAT on historic building repairs. We will increase grassroots sports funding, and support the UK’s 2012 Olympic and Paralympic bid. |
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Set communities free from WhitehallWe will free local councils from many of the stifling controls of central government so that they can innovate and deliver services that meet local people’s real needs. Councils will become genuinely accountable to their local communities rather than being agents of Whitehall. To cut bureaucracy and increase effectiveness we would go much further than Labour or the Tories to cut the burden of inspections, merging eight government inspectorates into one, a streamlined and independent Audit Commission. |
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Protect the post office network and universal mail deliveryOver 3,500 post offices have closed under Labour, and hundreds more are due to be axed. Thousands also closed under the Conservatives. Our priority is to secure a viable future for the post office network, by developing a business plan based on providing a combination of commercial services, benefits transactions and government information. This will help keep more post offices open. We will maintain the obligation on Royal Mail to provide universal same-price delivery of letters throughout the UK. |
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When local democracy works, the people taking decisions are people who actually use their local schools or hospitals, and care about them. They are locally elected people, who earn your trust when they get it right, or are thrown out if they get it wrong. |
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Yet successive Conservative and Labour governments have stripped power from local communities. Ministers and officials in Whitehall take all the key decisions now, over the heads of local doctors, police chiefs or head teachers – without ever visiting the schools, hospitals or police stations that are so precious to their communities. |
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Worse still, they’ve imposed an unfair tax system for all this. The Council Tax was dreamt up by the Conservatives, but Labour has made it even worse, with bills rocketing. It’s just not right to force people on incomes as low as £12,000 a year to hand over an average of a thousand pounds or more in Council Tax. Now millions are threatened with huge further increases in Council Tax if Labour and Conservative plans to revalue our homes and change the Council Tax bands go ahead – it’s already hit Wales. |
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Meanwhile more and more young people can’t even afford a home and the number of homeless families is at a record high. While the Conservatives sold off affordable homes, Labour cut the numbers being built. That’s why I’m so determined to help create new opportunities for people to afford their first home. |
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It makes no sense to me that local decisions are taken by distant bureaucrats or politicians who don’t know local services, and will never use them. And I will never accept that local taxes should impoverish families and pensioners, or that millions should be unable to afford a decent home. It’s time to cut the Whitehall red tape and absurd rules. Bring in a fair system for paying for local services. Help and encourage voluntary initiatives, such as social enterprises and local credit unions. In other words, it’s time to trust local communities to take their own decisions again. Edward Davey - Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary of State for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister |
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In the nineteenth century Liberals used local democracy to transform our cities, delivering for the first time clean water and sewerage, public health and education, power and transport. In the twenty-first century, we need to strip away central government red tape and unelected quangos, and set communities free again, to reinvigorate local services on the front-line, and to hold those responsible properly accountable. Simon Hughes - President of the Liberal Democrats |
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Green Action |
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Tackle wasteLiberal Democrats will set a long-term goal of zero municipal waste, through waste minimisation, reuse and recycling. As a first step, we will make sure that within seven years 60 per cent of all household waste is recycled and we will aim to offer every household regular kerbside recycling. Manufacturers will be held responsible for disposing of their products and materials that are difficult to reuse or recycle. We will not allow new incinerators for municipal waste unless they can be shown to be the best environmental option after considering all alternatives, including new technologies where waste reduction and reuse are not possible. |
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Planning for sustainabilityWe will reform the planning system to make sure that local authority development plans are sustainable. That means incorporating targets for CO2 emission reductions to encourage the development of renewable energy facilities, and accounting for the climate change consequences of policies, including transport. We will also use building regulations to improve the environmental quality of new buildings. |