Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:41 pm on 2 February 2022.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 1:41, 2 February 2022

Well, I made a statement on 7 December, providing our early thoughts in response to the work that we commissioned over the period of the last Senedd, which was published in our summary of findings. That pulled together various potential models for the future, as investigated by Bangor University, Cardiff University, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and others who have been doing work for us. So, our next steps, as set out in that statement, would be to look to a number of streams of work. One would be to ask the Valuation Office Agency to update the valuations here in Wales. That hasn't happened for some time; actually, it's existed in its current form—the council tax system has existed in its current form—since 1993, so we've got a lot of catching up to do in terms of recognising the value of properties. And that's a good start. That will help us then consider future options—for example, changing the number of bands, adding bands at the top and bottom of the system to try and make the system fairer. And, also, it will be the intention to review the council tax reduction scheme. So, at the moment, we're able to support over 200,000 families, households, across Wales in respect of council tax bills. So, we'll be reviewing that to make sure that the new system is coherent with whatever comes next after the valuation. Also, we'll be reviewing the discounts, disregards, exemptions and premiums to ensure that they're also relevant to today's policy ambitions.