Yes, I know I’ll get 1p off a bus fare and my electricity bill might possibly not skyrocket quite so much and that the price of a pint of beer might not increase.
That aside, I gather I’m meant to feel pampered and privileged and living high on the hog because I live in the South – while those who live a couple of hundred miles up the road are finding life tougher.
Imagine my jaw-dropping surprise therefore when I noticed that I am paying more for my modest terraced house in South East England than is charged to the flat allocated to the Prime Minister in No 10 Downing Street. Yes, lucky residents of the City of Westminster have amongst the lowest council tax rates in the UK – in spite of having some of the most high-value property in the UK.
In line with its location and value, the residential part of No 10 Downing Street is in the highest Band H as per Westminster council tax designations and so pays £2,099.10 p.a., while a typical Band D resident pays just £1,049.55 p.a. (Burnham may opt to claim a single-person discount as his family will not join him in Downing Street, so he’ll get even more of a bargain.)
In stark comparison, in the south-eastern Wealden area a Band H resident pays £5,554.28 p.a. – i.e., £3,455.18 p.a. more than a comparable home in Westminster.
In similar contrast, a Band D resident pays £2,777.14 – i.e., £1,728.59 more than Band D residents in Westminster.
Manchester rates are also favourable, with Band H properties paying £930.20 less than in Wealden, while a Band D resident pays £465.10 less.
Incidentally, here in the South we also typically pay more for a (recently execrable) water service than Westminster and Manchester, our transport system isn’t great, our roads are covered in potholes and we have significantly fewer universities than many other parts of the country. But of course all taxation and means-tested benefits are the same throughout England, which means that the excessive council tax hits the just-managing even harder.
More power placed in the hands of regional mayors will only serve to exacerbate the discrepancies which exist and lump together places which are utterly diverse. As established, turnout for local elections is lamentably low: just 25.14% voted for Manchester’s newly elected Mayor and 32.05% for the previous one – now Prime Minister. That’s democracy in name only.
As if all this weren’t vexatious enough, there is another not-so-small problem in Crowborough, a country town in the Wealden area – namely, a camp for 540 asylum seekers adjacent to the town. The camp is next to the Ashdown Forest and there are many large detached properties in the vicinity. Some may well be within the G/H bands for council tax and are therefore paying several thousands of pounds more than comparable properties in Westminster or Manchester. That’s not their only problem, though. Depending on how close to the camp they are, some houses – however fine – have literally become unsellable. At the lower end of the scale, where householders already pay so much more than Band H properties in Westminster, thousands are also being lopped off the value of houses.
Wealden Council will receive payment per camp resident. Will council tax payers in Crowborough be compensated for the financial and other disadvantages they are suffering? I very much doubt it. An explanation as to why Wealden council tax rates are the fifth highest – out of 317 – in the country would be welcome. A number of other southern areas also have the highest rates in the country. Such considerable nationwide discrepancy in respect of local taxation does the concept of enhanced regionalism and mayoral autonomy no favours.
There is of course no respite, no solution in sight for Crowborough residents specifically. Leaving aside the lack of will and the ineptitude that seemingly prevents any control of the Channel disaster, the Home Office has indicated that the Crowborough camp will remain open until at least 2030. What hope therefore for those who wish to sell their houses now or in the near future? Is this what Andy and his Government want? Are they at best complacent – and at worst pleased – to see people’s hard-earned assets depleting before their eyes due entirely to government incompetence? Is this what is called levelling up?
This is made even harder to digest by the snippets of information we glean from those associated with the camp. We know that the ‘residents’ are provided with activities and outings in addition to their other freebies. We know that in recent weeks a rapist, a paedophile and another criminal have been arrested. We know that the camp is run by Clearsprings, which runs other camps and numerous HMOs and which, in spite of receiving relentless criticism by select committees for its awful service and standards, continues to be granted further contracts for asylum accommodation. Never mind – the Clearsprings owner became a billionaire last year and has decamped to Monaco.
Is this more levelling up? We pay taxes in order for the Government to transfer them to people who have entered our country illegally and to enrich opportunists and charlatans? While locally we pay more council tax than much of the rest of the country, our properties diminish in value. Is that how it works?
Do enlighten me, Andy. I know you like pork scratchings and some sort of bun. I know that you’re surrounded by a posse of females with variable memories about their past and that Manchester is wonderful and you’ve supposedly a friendly way with you. Other than that we know nothing. That may in part be because you appear to have scant knowledge about our country as a whole. There are pockets of wealth and pockets of poverty and pockets of everything else in between distributed throughout the country, and seeking to artificially divide us is remarkably unhelpful – and a bit juvenile, like your TikToks.
Unfortunately none of this helps me or my area – nor any other place which is instructed it will have a migrant camp on its doorstep. Good luck Bicester, Barham and Linton-on-Ouse. All you can do is fight.
Here in Crowborough we shall have our 40th peaceful protest march next Sunday. Why? Because those of us who care about our place (yes, we have a strong sense of it!) want to come together, to express our dismay at what is being done to us and our country without consultation, without our permission. So Andy, what would you and your Government have us do – remain supine and silent and let things just happen to us? Our country is a permanent fixture. You are its transient leader. When you get round to doing your job, you might remember that.
Madeleine Gillies is a Crowborough resident with a career in language teaching in the UK and abroad.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Today Burnham is starting a tour of the UK to talk to people and find out what their concerns are!! Who are the imbeciles advising Burnham to do something so DAFT?? Haven’t they heard of opinion polls??
Will he be touring in the private jet? Perhaps he’s playing out a fantasy of being a rock star…..
It is a shocker what the law abiding people of this country will tolerate.
Crowborough and Tunbridge Wells area should be glad that it doesn’t have a university. Otherwise it would be like Brighton with two and a population of Maoist Green benders who keep the Socialist Green council in office and live in HMOs paying no council tax but allowed to have a parking permit per resident. The only time house can park is when they clear off on holiday. .
It isn’t Government / Establishment incompetence. That’s what they want you to think.
It’s DELIBERATE. All the evidence is that they are encouraging, facilitating and making you and me pay for the criminal migrants.
Why? Because they WANT them here. The only unknown is WHY.
I think it is Agenda 2030 … and there is an agreement with the EU/France that “we’ll take our fair share.”
A Government which admitted it was deliberately accepting 50,000 3rd world “refugees” every year would not last long. So there is a secret deal: the British Government pretends it wants to stop the invasion; the French Government pretends it is trying. It is ALL just theatre.
The close coordination, and the return of the burning dinghy to France last week (when France usually REFUSES to accept returns) gives the game away. As does Burnham’s policy announcement ….. that the boats will be stopped when/if we have “safe and legal routes” on the Statute Book ….. Fabian Party policy.
There is only one way to stop it. Vote Reform.
Hear, hear!
Levelling up is just like all the other left-wing initiatives that are marketed as being intended to improve the lot of the poor: it will decrease inequality by bringing the quality of life of non-poor people down towards the base level. I’m from a post-industrial city that could do with a bit of actual levelling up, but the best my birthplace has seen is a bit of new unskilled employment at call centres. At the same time, every time I go back to visit I see more and more people who clearly are not from there and who have time to be out and about in the middle of the day. I used to believe in leftism, but now I’ve become one of the ‘I’m not racist but’ people I used to despise.
Ah well. Loginnagain!
Football Shirt Boy is apparently going on a tour of his new realm and is it supposed to include listening. So far it seems he hasn’t listened to any questions from Britain’s No.1 News channel. He is looking for easy wins to cut people’s cost of living – well the biggest cost I have is my council tax. And all the other taxes I am hit with punch a big hole in the remainder of my income but best Football Shirt Boy has come up with is a requirement that subscription services tell you each time they want to increase the fee that might remind you of forgotten subscriptions. Wow!
Remember John Major and the traffic cones?
Council tax rates are determined by the relative value of the house in 1990. I wonder if there’s a case for saying that if a migrant camp had existed next-door to these houses in 1990, then they’d have been valued at a lower level than they were, which would mean that they may attract a rebate.
I doubt it, but worth a try.
Yep, my house, which is band F even after Tribunal challenge, despite being bought for 150K less then the band F threshold and never having sold for such a value, costs me £3300 a year to a Buckingham palace apartments £1800.
The Communists seem to take care of themselves, funny that.
Nothing’s too good for the shirkers.
It was when Burnham was part of the Treasury team under Blair-Brown that the government took on vast “off balance sheet” contracts for public services. Military buildings and training, HMRC offices and much else were sold to offshore businesses.
The rent and charges paid by HMT end up in tax free vehicles owned by the likes of Cameron ‘s family via offshore trusts.
Meanwhile those of us who worked all our lives and cost the state almost nothing, we have our income taxed at record high rates and if we are prudent enough to have some left over at death the buggers take most of that as well.
The state theft does t stop there.
Council tax was meant to pay for local services. Now it funds huge local borrowing on fantasy schemes that often go bust, senior staff hold pensions and wokery. Also it funds services for illegal and other immigrants who neither work nor reformed us.
To add insult to injury they now want to charge much much higher tax on homes we have worked to improve. Meanwhile those with valuable paintings and objet d’art and who may well be very rich will… Read more »
Respect us …
They have been taking the piss for 30 years.
At least.
Where do your taxes go? | No Tax for War This is an interesting read.
“Leaving aside the lack of will and the ineptitude that seemingly prevents any control of the Channel disaster,”. I don’t think it is ineptitude when they are getting exactly what they want.
My wife and I are currently on holiday in Yorkshire, Co Durham and Northumberland. Weather is great thank you for asking.
petrol is cheaper, meals and booze cheaper, rooms in pubs reasonable.
Toads don’t have potholes and very little traffic.
Not tough in ‘t north.
Toads seem to be hiding. Roads have no potholes.
Northumberland is lovely – it felt like going back 20 years when I went…
Burnham and the Labour Party MPs don’t give a flying fig about Crowborough and / or its inhabitants; equally, Bicester, Barham or Linton. So, whilst I agree 100% with your complaint, I regret you are whistling in the wind if you think your article (or your Sunday marches) will have the slightest effect on Government policy. There is almost nothing that these deceitful, corrupt, self-interested and grossly incompetent politicians care less about than the inhabitants of Crowborough. I feel for you and just thank God there is no abandoned Army Camp near where I live that can be used to house these dangerous illegal immigrants.
Correction. They are not incompetent. They are doing it with full knowledge. Just as the Tories did.
Thry hate us.
My compliments to the residents of Crowborough for maintaining their discipline for 40 peaceful marches.
You are superb.
However in my doggy opinion you have made a strategic error.
The government doesn’t do democracy in the sense of doing what people want and it doesn’t do listening to peaceful marches.
Unfortunately for all of us they only respond to the credible threat of force.
You have to start with inanimate objects but it will probably become necessary to escalate to human targets at some point.
They are counting on us not having the stomach for a fight, regrettably it is increasingly hard to see how a fight can be avoided, this is an existential struggle to save the fruit of 1500 years of struggle by our forefathers.
Yes, but down here in rural Dorset (ie not near Bournemouth) they are cropping up in ever-growing numbers in the small towns ….. HMOs which you and I are paying for.