§ Mr. SteinbergTo ask the Deputy Prime Minister pursuant to his Answer of 2 March 2004,Official Report, column 820W, on council tax, what total additional revenue support grant has been allocated to Durham as a result of the council tax base reduction because of the number of student exemptions. [159464]
§ Mr. RaynsfordIt is not possible to give a meaningful value for the total additional revenue support grant that has been allocated to Durham as a result of the council tax base reduction because of the number of student exemptions.
That is because, to do so, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister would first need to calculate a taxbase that included the properties currently excluded because of student exemptions for all authorities. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister does not have any information about whether these properties would have otherwise been subject to different discounts or exemptions (e.g. single-person discount).
This new taxbase would then need to be used to recalculate Revenue Support Grant (RSG). This is likely to result in a different distribution of grant before floors and ceilings to authorities. The existing levels of floors and ceilings may then be inappropriate with this new distribution; it would certainly change the scaling factors on grant increases above the floor published in the Local Government Finance Report (England) 2004–05.
The number of properties covered by student exemptions is no longer collected by band of property. The latest year for which this information was available was 2002–03. In 2002 –03 Durham City had one class K exemptions (an empty dwelling owned by a student who last lived in the dwelling as their main home), 129 class M exemptions (for halls of residence) and 728 class N exemptions (for dwellings occupied only by students, the foreign spouses of students, or school and college leavers). This is the equivalent of about 828 Band D properties. The Standard Tax Element for shire districts for 2002–03 was £97.2073276605. Therefore under the assumptions specified in the Local Government Finance Report (England) 2002–03, Durham City would have been able to raise a further £80,444.46 had these properties not had student exemptions. An equivalent amount of RSG before floors and ceilings was therefore provided to Durham City with respect to the properties with student exemptions.