Council Tax

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:33 pm on 28 September 2022.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 1:33, 28 September 2022

I do recognise as well that this is an important area of joint working between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government. I'm very grateful to Cefin Campbell in particular for the work that he's done in helping shape the ideas for a council tax that will rebalance the tax burden on households and fund the services that everybody benefits from, and that connects people to their communities and also has built in regular updates to keep it fair into the future.

I think the most important thing that we can do to support people at the moment is to ensure that everybody who is entitled to support through the council tax reduction scheme is able to get that support—and, as I say, there are lots of people who aren't—and also to work with local authorities in terms of the approach that they have to arrears. So, we've taken a person-centred approach to that. The local authorities themselves have come up with a set of guidelines and a toolkit to help them take that person-centred approach and to explore with the individual if there's more that they could be doing.

Quite simply, a bonfire of debt is unaffordable at the moment, unless, of course, Plaid Cymru want to pinpoint areas that we can move money from within the Welsh Government budget to support that. I'm always open to those discussions and those ideas, but, at the moment, I think it's about making sure that we have as many people accessing the support as they can, potentially reducing their bills to nil, and also supporting those who are in debt to have a manageable programme of paying back those debts to the council.