Local Government Committee, 05 Oct 1999

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 5, 1999

Official Report 199KB pdf

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Council Tax

The next piece of business concerns students and council tax. You will have received a copy of the letter from the City of Edinburgh Council about the problems it is having with students' council tax. The problems are not peculiar to Edinburgh; all councils have them. I do not consider this an emergency—we do not have to look at it today. We need more information on this complex matter and I suggest that we ask SPICe for more information, distribute that to you, and then bring the matter back to a committee meeting.

The matter must be addressed and this committee is the place to do it, but resolving it might require a change in legislation. To do that we would need more information.

There is a lot of knowledge on the subject among city councils. I hope that you will use that information, rather than reinvent the wheel.

We will get a brief from the council—

Presumably you will get a view from students' organisations too?

Yes, we will get a wider brief and then we will put it on the agenda for discussion.

Eugene is suggesting that we should get the information from SPICe first, examine that, and then suggest who else we might consult.

If we do get to the stage where we suggest changes to legislation, presumably we would want to check whether other anomalies are thrown up by the system, which we might address at the same time. If there are related issues, it would make sense to take them forward as a package.

Yes, that might come up once we see the SPICe briefing and start to speak to people. Leave that with us and we will process it sooner rather than later.