Council Tax exemptions data update

As regular readers of BeestonWeek will know I have a thing about council tax exempt properties, especially in relation to occupants in 'full-time education', generally referred to as 'student housing'.

My 'thing' relates to how too much student housing in any one area (eg. Lenton, Beeston) upsets the 'balance' of a street and the community it is part of. You have to look no further than electoral rolls for evidence of this fact. In turn this impacts on local shops, schools, house prices and local government revenue in the form of council tax income and any additional services as a result of the exemptions .

In February 2015 I Broxtowe Borough Council kindly provided me with data which I used to create a table of council tax exempt properties in the Borough by street and areas, plus a map of Beeston showing the density of council tax exempt properties by street (you can still see all this in my pages section to the right, where there are links).

At the end of 2016 I began the process of trying to update the data, but Broxtowe Borough Council refused me the data I requested. After I submitted a Freedom of Information request to Broxtowe Borough Council I was promised the data for mid-March 2017. I didn't chase it because by then I was in hospital having just had open heart surgery. When I did get onto it in April, there were clearly problems because the council officer who compiled the data in 2015 had left and what detailed data I was given was clearly inaccurate, so we arranged that I would have the data by the end of May (ie. about now).

In the event the data problems have continued, but I have found myself in contact with the person who has responsibility for compiling the data. After exchanging e-mails and on reflection we have agreed to compile detailed data about council tax exempt properties in Broxtowe for the end of September 2017. This has the advantage of coinciding with the beginning of the new academic year and the preparation of draft budgets for the next financial year.

As I have said on countless occasions this is not a party political issue as far as I am concerned. The fact that I am a Labour Party member does not prevent me from working with members of other political parties when it comes to council tax exempt properties. I believe a joint approach to this sensitive issue makes sense.

I was recently invited to write a contribution to the Beeston & District Civic Society Newsletter on the issue. I don't know whether it has been used, but I have just noticed an error on my part, brought about by me transposing two digits and, as a consequence, turning £590,000 in £950,000. The former is, according to a senior Broxtowe Borough Council officer in an e-mail to a borough councillor, 'The full council tax charge for Broxtowe residents in full time education in 2016/16 is around £590,000' (includes Borough, County, Police and Fire precepts).

Given that a 1p council tax charge produces c£53,000, then 11p of our charge goes to covering the lost council tax exemption income before any services are provided. The officer in question says 'The cost to (Broxtowe Borough Council) will be around £59,000'.

My numerical 'slip' may have been my mind thinking that in just a few years council tax exempt properties in Broxtowe will be costing council tax payers nearer £1,000,000.

I also know that this is not an issue Broxtowe borough councillors have investigated. Given the sums of money involved this is remiss of them. Even when they do see this information, as I know one councillor has, its significance seems to pass them by.

I am now extremely hopeful that the data I am working on with Broxtowe Borough Council will be shared with councillors and some way of putting the data in the public domain will be found which ensures a constructive dialogue takes place. Given the interest now being shown by Beeston & District Civic Society I hope they can be the mechanism by which this data reaches a wider audience.

My very own local election poster

For some reason Broxtowe Constituency Labour Party has not printed posters for the ward candidates. Posters for Nick Palmer assault the eye wherever you go in and around Beeston. I don't know about the rest of the constituency, but I hope his posters are everywhere.

In contrast, I have yet to see a single Labour Party window bill showing the names of the ward candidates — which has amazed me. So I went to the newly opened office on City Road to track down a poster for Beeston North ward. The person organising things in the ward is being run off her feet, so I thought I was making a simple enough request, but it seems not. I was curtly told I could have a poster for Nick Palmer or a 'vote Labour' poster and reminded this was a general election.

My response was to make the point that it was also a borough council election and that it was as important to me as the general election. Another person then said he had never seen ward posters and this was his second election as a ward candidate. I responded by saying my experience in other places was very different.

I did actually catch sight of a 'Vote Labour' poster onto which someone had typed in large print Lynda Lally and added Pat in thick black ink. I only just saw it, hidden almost from view on a pinboard. Knowing Lynda and Pat, I suspect they could well dare to be different, but it is in front windows on streets where the ward posters need to be — not half-hidden on a pinboard in a Labour Party office!

I said there and then I would go home and make my own poster for the Labour candidates in Beeston North ward and I am proud to say it is now in our front window beside a Nick Palmer poster —

Cloud reflections in the window aside, you can see my poster in Wollaton Crescent, unique to Beeston (and all of Broxtowe in the absence of some enterprising agent or candidate in another part of the borough).

What really saddens me is this downgrading of the borough elections when for the past five years it has been local Labour Party workers and councillors doing the donkey and trying as best they could to limit the damage being done to Broxtowe by the Conservative-Liberal Coalition Government.

I suspect even with a Labour led government after the general election, Broxtowe's Labour councillors will still have to fight hard. I will believe any transfer of powers back to local government when it happens. In my book local councils trump Westminster any day and the quality of our lives, both now and historically, owes far more to the work of councillors than MPs.

Perhaps the Labour Party will, belatedly, organise the printing and distribution of local ward posters. Shame on them if they do not, for it will tell me and a good many other voters where their priorities lie and it won't be in Broxtowe for all they say.

Labour's foot soldiers are far too polite. Perhaps had local parties and councillors stood up for themselves some time ago the Party would not now be run by a caucus of professional politicians who have little experience of life in the trenches. The Conservatives and Liberals are much the same, hence the widespread view among voters that the main political parties are 'all the same'. 

Of course there are a few good Labour politicians out there and it is to Nick Palmer's immense credit that many local voters believe he will be his own person and among the few Greens voters I know, there is a belief that their having a candidate has helped ensure we will be getting an MP for Broxtowe and not one who will unquestioningly do the bidding of the Labour leadership. My support is based on this belief and my link to Nick Palmer's blog carries his promise to represent Broxtowe first.

There is still time for Labour to reinstate its Broxtowe Borough Council election campaign to being of equal importance to the general election campaign. As of yet I have not seen a Labour Party manifesto for Broxtowe. If it exists, where has it been published?