Not sexy but it matters: can the city sort out its council tax?

Dear readers — we hope you're feeling refreshed off the back of a gloriously sunny weekend. It's amazing the impact a bit of warmth can have on the mood. And when Glasgow is lit up by a golden glow, it's hard not to argue that it's potentially the most architecturally striking city in the UK.

Today we're getting a little bit political. Bear with us. Like the extended debate around metro mayors today's topic — council tax — sound dry but is really about cities and towns taking back the power to decide how to collect money, and where it gets spent. Council tax is what pays for the roads, bin collections and public transport aka the services and infrastructure people notice when they stop working. Which is why, with Glasgow counting pennies, your council tax has just gone up. But what if the entire system could be reformed?

Read on for your Monday briefing.

Big story: Not sexy but it matters — can the city sort out its council tax?

Topline: In the wake of this year’s council Budget — and subsequent council tax rise — local authority leaders have been making more noise about pushing for a reform of the entire thing. 

Stay with us: The topic isn’t very sexy, but it matters. Why? For one, council tax is considered massively outdated. Just last month, an Institute for Fiscal Studies report called Scotland’s council tax system “regressive and distortionary”. How much people pay — the ‘band’ they’re sorted into — is based on a property valuation made in April 1991. 

For two, Scotland has the power to reform its council tax system. So does Westminster, but there’s not the political will. Holyrood, on the other hand, could actually do something about it. At a time when council and personal budgets are increasingly squeezed, this might be a gamechanger. And Glasgow’s politicians could lead the charge. 

Why Glasgow? Because it’s the largest local authority in Scotland, and property value here has massively shifted over the last 34 years. As well the 1994 law which redrew Glasgow City’s boundaries, conveniently shifting more affluent areas into the likes of East Renfrewshire, council tax rolls don’t accurately reflect the contemporary worth of Glasgow property. Glasgow Greens finance lead, Councillor Jon Molyneux tells The Bell that only 17% of Glasgow property officially falls within the upper council tax bands (Z to H). There are only about 600 properties in the top H band. 

• Even if you account for the fact that Glasgow has less property wealth than its outlying suburbs, this “fundamentally [isn’t] an accurate reflection of the property wealth that does exist in Glasgow,” Molyneux adds. “It's hardly an accurate reflection of the property wealth that exists in my ward [Pollokshields]”. 
• And there’s even more pressure on Glasgow, as it’s a "metropolitan heart” he says. The city is providing “services and facilities that are accessed by people from outside the city, but are entirely funded from Glasgow coffers”. (The Bell has covered this predicament before, if you’d like to read more on that debate). 
• “Obviously there’s going to be winners and losers under any new system,” Molyneux says. “But if the replacement is designed progressive[ly], more people will benefit”.

Why hasn’t it been reformed already? Well, this is where it gets interesting. Molyneux claims that at Holyrood, it’s the dominant SNP who have been the block, despite previous (broken) promises to fix the system. “The line that comes back in meetings or in statements from ministers,” reports Molyneux, “and I've heard this from SNP councillors as well, is: ‘there's no majority in parliament for replacing it’.” But he believes the reason there's no majority is “because the SNP doesn't have a vision for what it wants to do in this space.”

• The Scottish Government have just launched a consultation on council tax, eyeing next year’s Holyrood elections. But Molyneux isn’t very optimistic, saying that beyond examining property revaluation and updating tax bands, the scope is too “narrow”.

So what’s happening in Glasgow? Well, according to Molyneux, two out of three parties are aligned. Labour and the Greens both support a progressive property tax. There are “slightly different views on what exactly it would look like,” he says, but there’s a clear “opportunity for consensus”. Now SNP politicians in Glasgow have started making noises about council tax reform as well. 

• City council treasurer, Ricky Bell penned an op-ed for The Herald just two days ago, referencing council tax. He said local authorities need to be given more powers to raise resources locally, calling explicitly on the Scottish Government (and Westminster) to devolve these to Glasgow. 
• This is inline with Molyneux’s vision, who cites the set of levy powers recently handed down by the national government. These are “good and positive,” he says but why not devolve general taxation powers to councils, rather than invest huge amounts of legislative time and energy into doing “these small bits of empowerment on an individual basis?”
• For this, the Scotland Act might need an amendment though he says. But conditions are ripe. “There’s a big movement around English devolution,” Molyneux notes. “A direction of travel about devolving more powers locally. There’s potential for a fertile conversation [re: Scotland]: if we want to do that, what powers would be conferred [here]?”

Don’t forget the renters: There is one point The Bell raised though: renters. Since 1999, Scotland’s private rental sector has grown by at least 200,000. Reporting by The Ferret found around 61,149 private rental properties in Glasgow in 2024. How can renters be shielded from paying council tax on the value of a property they have absolutely no long-term stake in? Molyneux didn’t really have an answer here, calling it a “good point to raise”. 

Bottom line: With elections coming up next year, and voters demanding systemic change, council tax reform could turn from a ‘wish’ to a ‘must’. “Tweaking things round the edges isn’t really going to cut it,” says Molyneux. He feels positive. “Stuff that is maybe a bit geeky, like local finance and regional governance, these issues are being talked about with elected mayors. I feel hopeful these are going to be active debates in the campaigns for the next Holyrood elections”.

Should council tax be reformed? If so, how? Let us know in the comments.

Stories you might have missed:

A £357,845 early retirement payout for Glasgow’s former council chief was not ‘lawfully approved’
💰 A legal review into five massive exit packages for former Glasgow council officials has concluded that the approvals process wasn’t technically breached, except in the case of the former chief executive, Annemarie O’Donnell. Given the alarm regarding these payouts was raised by treasurer Ricky Bell, and council leader Susan Aitken, this is essentially saying the system is not fit for purpose. Which is why Cllr Bell has said the council will now be “swiftly” changing their processes. 

Richard Tice hits Gallowgate institution but won’t have a chippy tea
🎣 Before this weekend’s civil war erupted within Reform UK, deputy leader Richard Tice was in Glasgow on Friday to announce two new defectors. Not only did he forget their surnames, Tice also refused to eat the fish and chips cooked for him by Val D’oro proprietor Enrico Corvi, who was hosting the photocall — although the two bonded over shared climate change denial, according to The Scotsman.

Read/listen/watch:

Once the youngest MP in Westminster, Mhairi Black grew tired of the pomp, ceremony and toxicity of Westminster, leaving politics altogether last year. This hour-long documentary follows Black as she exits the political stage, swapping it for the comedic one, as she brings her stand-up show, ‘Politics Isn’t for Me’, to the Fringe. Notably, in the run up to the show’s  release, Black has talked about her 2017/18 ADHD diagnosis, which she kept quiet because it would be “used against me”  in the febrile political atmosphere.  

We also rec: 

🪧 On the front line of anti-abortion buffer zones
A long read on the fallout from JD Vance’s demonstrably false and misleading comments at the Munich security conference last month about Glasgow’s exclusion zone.  

🗣 The Citizens is set to phoenix
We were excited to see the first glimpse footage of the Gorbals’ Citizens Theatre, set to reopen later this year following a £30m renovation, in which hidden Victorian features were discovered and retained. 

Did you catch… last week’s read on the rise of ‘pauper’s funerals’? 

No one likes to envisage their death. But Margaret Taylor’s reporting on a rise in public health funerals in Glasgow, is a fascinating – and bleak — illustration on how poverty manifests in unexpected ways. 

Told through the life and death of Glaswegian James O’Connor, Margaret digs into why the city’s public health funerals have rocketed by two-thirds since the Covid-19 pandemic, where comparable cities like Manchester have seen theirs decrease. Read the piece here.

Editor's note: If you’d like to support local, independent journalism that’s not owned by billionaires, or funded via clickbait ads, you can sign up to become a paying member of The Bell for less than a monthly Netflix subscription, today. 

Just a perfect day

Every week, one Glasgow resident runs us through their ideal way to spend a day in the city.

Chris Mitchell, 48, GMB convenor for refuse and cleaning, Glasgow

DAWN: It’s a Saturday. I teach fitness so I’d get up at 7am, prepare for my boxing session at 9am, have a small light breakfast. Banana, toast, nothing too heavy on the stomach. I’ve got my own personal gym — I used to own a community centre but unfortunately it closed during Covid-19. I’m trying to get it back up. 

MIDDAY: If my wife and kids are around, I’ll do something with them. My son’s 27; we often train together. The girls are 23 and 15 — we might all go on a day out or visit family. Both me and my wife have big families. If I’m on my own, I’ll cycle along the banks of the Clyde, down Route 74, to clear my head after a busy week’s schedule. It can take me from the back end of Carmyle as far out as Loch Lomond, depending on how I feel that day. Because of my set diet, I’ll eat a tuna sandwich or pasta for lunch. 

AFTERNOON: If my wife and kids are out, it’s my time to chill out, especially if it’s been hectic that day or week. I’ll watch a couple of horror films on the couch and flick through Netflix or Sky. I’m not keen on the serial killer ones; I like supernatural or sci fi movies. I’m fascinated with space — I’m not a boffin or anything but I like spaceships. Old school, like ‘Predator’ or ‘Alien’. 

DUSK: I’ll probably go for a walk around my local area, it’s a close knit community in Carmyle. You always bump into someone and have a conversation; people ask me about the trade union, say they’ve seen me on TV on social media and to keep up the good fight. I’m regularly being approached for advice because of my job. Family, work; I like to help, make sure people are alright. Some people in life are struggling and you won’t see it, so I see if they’re doing ok. For dinner, I have a treat — a wee curry. Garlic chicken bhuna with chicken pakora and rice. At the moment my go-to is an Indian that just opened in Carmyle, The Curry House. The guy who cooks there apparently has won a lot of awards. 

AFTER HOURS: I’ll go for a pint. Maybe a pub crawl in the town centre, otherwise it’s my local, The Auld Boat House. Sometimes there’s a band or karaoke — my song is Forever In Blue Jeans by Neil Diamond. Play some pool, which I’m alright at. I just like a good laugh. And everyone’s in the pub: friends, family, we’re all socialising. Sometimes I’ll end up at someone’s house if I’m a wee bit tipsy but I train on Sundays, so I don’t want a banging sore head. Either way, I’ll be in bed by 12.30am, and as soon as my head hits the pillow I’m out for the count.

Unconstructive critique: Pakistani Street Food, 105 Albert Drive

Aficionados of South Asian cuisine won’t have missed the latest Pollokshields opening. Sitting on the corner of Albert Drive and Darnley, there’s ample room in Pakistani Street Food’s second establishment, unlike their first shop on Vicky Road. The décor is a polychromatic feast for the eyes — art work, murals, knitted wall baskets and technicolour tables. The speciality here is paratha wraps: a veg pakora number with tamarind and mint sauce was spicy and just a little sweet, with coriander seeds and fragrant fenugreek giving it all a lovely lift. The samosa chana chaat, unfortunately, was less noteworthy. In an area with no shortage of chaat, nor samosa, we feel the “1st and only Pakistani Street Food experiance [sic] in Scotland” needs to try a little harder.  

Glasgow calendar: A slammin’ time at the Opry 

The Grand Ole Opry is one of the city’s most interesting — and occasionally controversial — curios. This week, they’re welcoming American-style wrestling outfit VALOR back to the venue on 8 March, for their SUPERSLAM tournament. There’s a £10,000 cash prize up for grabs, to be bestowed upon whoever triumphs in what the enthusiastic VALOR promoter dubbed a “10-Man over the top, rope battle royal!”. Tickets from £16.96. 

Other dates for your diary:

🍼 New parent who wants a laugh? Bring your baby to a comedy show
13 March, 12.30pm, Van Winkle Barrowlands. Tickets from £11. 

🎭 The stage adaptation 1980s classic ‘Boys From The Blackstuff’ hits Glasgow
11-15 March, Theatre Royal Glasgow. Tickets from £15.