The saga of the Local Government Finance Bill becomes more curious every week. The Bill has two main purposes - to allow some degree of local retention of business rates and to localise council tax benefit. The first was broadly welcome as a concept, but the complexity of the scheme and the degree to which central government continues to pull all the strings has left most people in local government feeling disappointed at the waste of a good opportunity to devolve more financial control to the local level. By contrast, the localisation of council tax benefit is a disaster in the making. The rushed implementation timetable, coupled with the imposition of a 10% cut in central government support, poses a huge challenge to local authorities.
展开▼
