Axe the unfair Council Tax – Local Income Tax is fair and affordable.

 On top of the Chancellor’s plans to increase Council Tax yet again, Council Tax revaluation in England in 2007 threatens one in three households with huge and arbitrary rises, as is already happening in Wales. The Council Tax penalises pensioners and people on low incomes, who pay a far higher proportion of their income in Council Tax than the very rich. A Local Income Tax is based very simply on the ability to pay. It would be run through the existing Inland Revenue Income Tax mechanism, so saving hundreds of millions of pounds by abolishing Council Tax administration. The typical household will save around £450 per year, and eight out of ten pensioners will have lower bills.

Affordable homes. 

We will help tackle the affordable housing crisis by making available public sector land currently owned by the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Health and English Partnerships, sufficient to build 100,000 more homes both for rent and for affordable purchase through shared ownership schemes for local people. We will reform VAT to encourage developers to repair and reuse empty buildings and brownfield land, rather than building on greenfields and eroding the countryside. We will take 150,000 homebuyers a year out of paying stamp duty altogether, by raising the threshold to £150,000. In areas where second homes are overwhelming the local housing market, we will require people to get planning permission before turning another full-time home into a holiday home.

Rural Housing - Andrew Duffield

Protect the post office network and universal mail delivery. 

Over 3,500 post offices have closed under Labour, and hundreds more are due to be axed. Thousands also closed under the Conservatives. Our priority is to secure a viable future for the post office network, by developing a business plan based on providing a combination of commercial services, benefits transactions and government information. This will help keep more post offices open. We will maintain the obligation on Royal Mail to provide universal same-price delivery of letters throughout the UK.

Post Offices - Andrew Duffield

Link to full Manifesto