No instrument for updating the local tax base: council tax still sits on 1991 valuations

Council tax remains based on 1991 property values, with no English revaluation in 35 years, and in its September 2025 response to the HCLG Committee the government confirmed it has no plans to reform council tax; the fiscal devolution roadmap focuses on sharing national taxes instead. No statutory revaluation cycle exists and the VOA maintains no domestic revaluation dataset, so the base corrodes further every year. The IFS and the HCLG Committee have repeatedly recommended revaluation and band reform, and Wales legislated for regular revaluations in its Local Government Finance Act of 2024, which shows the instrument is buildable inside the UK.

The principal local tax is increasingly regressive and arbitrary. Identical bills for wildly divergent property values distort household fairness, and the equalisation formulas built on measured tax capacity inherit the same distortion. Every step of fiscal devolution compounds errors baked into a 1991 snapshot.

A statutory rolling revaluation cycle with automated valuation infrastructure at the VOA and transitional relief, de-politicised through an independent cross-party commission, on the Welsh legislative model.

// State-led: Instrument: primary legislation for a rolling revaluation cycle on the Welsh 2024 Act model, with VOA automated-valuation infrastructure.

The principal local tax runs on 35-year-old valuations, and government explicitly ruled out reform in 2025, so the build is long and contested.