Green Party members of the Stroud District Council and Gloucestershire County Council have raised concerns about the small print in recent proposals to give new powers to local Councils to control business rates.
The Chancellor promised to turn over revenue from business rates to local councils in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester.
Gloucestershire County Councillor Sarah Lunnon has pointed out that only Councils who choose to follow Osbourne’s push for elected mayors will have the power to increase rates. All others, including Stroud, would only be allowed to lower the current rates.
“This will undoubtedly result in a race to the bottom as local councils compete to attract and keep business by lowering business rates to levels that will damage our economies and hurt services to all residents,” said Lunnon. She went on to say that this will “increase the inequality that we already have between wealthier Councils in areas such as London and poorer ones in the rest of the country”.
Stroud District Councillor Simon Pickering noted that any increased revenues from rate increases would only be targeted to infrastructure; and plans must be approved by local businesses.
“This is clearly not a transfer of revenues or powers to local government, but is simply another half-cooked idea from a chancellor who is still clearly in the pocket of the establishment and seems to have little understanding of local government or even what a free market is, rather than control from central office.” Pickering went on to say, “Greens would welcome full local tax raising powers to be devolved to local government but the chancellor’s scheme, despite all the smoke and mirrors, is still hampered by the dead hand of state control by central government”
This proposal goes hand in hand with the push by Whitehall for so-called devolution. A bid was recently submitted jointly by the six Gloucestershire District and City Councils, the County Council, the NHS Clinical Commissioning Group, the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), the Gloucestershire Constabulary and the Office of Police and Crime Commissioner for the devolution of some powers from Whitehall to a poorly-defined combined entity in Gloucestershire.