UK Council Tax SHOCK: Wandsworth is planning a 160...

UK Council Tax SHOCK: Wandsworth is planning a 160% rise – that’s +£800 a year for an average home.

UK Council Tax SHOCK 💷

If you live in central London, check your letterbox. A bill shock is coming.

Wandsworth — long famous for having the lowest council tax in the country — is now planning England’s biggest ever council tax rise.

The Numbers

Conservative-run Wandsworth council is preparing to increase bills by up to 160 per cent, which would add £800 to the average household bill.

Band D homes there currently pay just £1,020 a year. Politics Home first reported the plan would translate to an £800 increase for the average household.

It would break the record set by Worcestershire last year, and it would be implemented next April before being frozen for the rest of the term.

Wandsworth’s deputy leader Peter Graham said no rise has yet been agreed but confirmed it is likely to be a “three-figure percentage increase”, blaming a £137m black hole left by Labour and warning that doing nothing would mean bankruptcy or a 230 per cent rise.

And Wandsworth is not alone.

Westminster council recently said that it would have to cut services or raise council tax by up to 200 per cent after an “unprecedented” £100 million drop in funding. The council is now writing to 200,000 residents asking what services they want scrapped.

Why Is This Happening?

This is Labour’s Fairer Funding Review — Angela Rayner’s big redistribution of local government cash.

The principle: Whitehall money should go to areas with the highest needs. To do that, several London councils have been hit by a massive reallocation of funding.

Under Labour’s Fairer Funding Review, the largest cuts to future funding settlements will affect Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, Wandsworth, Westminster and the City of London, as well as Windsor and Maidenhead.

Those six boroughs are among the winners of the old system because they kept bills historically low. Now ministers argue they have had “historically very low bills” and have granted them special permission to raise council tax by more than 5 per cent without a referendum for the next two years to raise more revenue.

On the other side, the winners are stark. The IFS says outer London boroughs like Enfield, Havering and Hillingdon could see funding rise 20% in real terms, while the East Midlands could see 15% and Yorkshire & Humber 12%. The most deprived areas — Middlesbrough, Birmingham, Manchester and inner-London boroughs like Haringey — are set for a funding hike.

The government calls it closing the gap. The boroughs call it being punished for being frugal.

Fair Redistribution or Punishment for London?

This is the fault line that will dominate UK politics next year.

The case for reform: London is still the richest region on average. Why should Wandsworth charge £1,020 for Band D while Hartlepool charges over £2,300 for arguably worse services? If you base Whitehall grants on need, not on who already keeps tax low, you move money north and to deprived communities. Outer London boroughs that have high deprivation but low tax bases finally get help.

The case against: Wandsworth residents say they did everything right — low tax, high reserves, no external debt under Labour until May, according to the former Labour leader. Now they face the biggest cut to funding of any council anywhere in the country because Labour in Whitehall changed the formula. And Westminster says it faces an unprecedented £100m drop in central funding with only two bad choices: gut adult social care, libraries and street cleaning, or pass a 200% rise onto residents already battered by mortgage rates and the new ‘mansion’ levy.

It also creates a bizarre incentive: councils that kept bills low to help residents are now told they must hike them, while those that already charged more get more cash.

So is this fairness? Or is it just moving the pain from Red Wall to Blue Wall London?

For a family in a two-bed in Battersea, an extra £800 a year is not abstract policy. It’s real money.

What do you think — long overdue redistribution, or punishment for living in London?

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