4. Statement by the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Reforming Council Tax in Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:08 pm on 7 December 2021.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 4:08, 7 December 2021

I'm really grateful to Mike Hedges for that series of questions and I know that this is an agenda that he is also very passionate about. At the start of his contribution, he gave us some really stark examples, really, as to why this work is so necessary in terms of council tax being regressive at the moment, and needing to change in order to become fairer. I think that the fact that we're at the same time as this work going to be undertaking a review of the council tax reduction scheme, and an evaluation of our discounts and exemptions and so forth, is really important because we can't take those pieces of work in isolation, and any support that we can provide to households needs to be done in a way now that will be cognisant of the new values and so forth.

All of those questions that Mike Hedges has described will be part of the consultation, where people will have opportunities to provide views on them, so that point about where the upper limit should lie, those points about a larger number of narrow bands and so forth, so there will be opportunities to contribute those ideas as part of the consultation, which will take place next year. What we're outlining today is the broad way forward rather than specific proposals for the way forward, but those questions, I think, again are ones that we'll have to grapple with in the period ahead.