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Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

Answer

Mr. Reed: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister how much is being paid to Charnwood borough council through the Revenue Support Grant in 2003-04 to compensate for council tax revenue lost as a result of the exemption for houses in multiple occupation occupied solely by students; and if he will make a statement. [162015] Mr. Raynsford: It is not possible to give a meaningful value for the total additional revenue support grant that has been allocated to Charnwood 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 tax base 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 tax base would then need to be used to recalculate Revenue Support Grant. 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. However, for 2002-03 an approximate calculation is shown as follows. 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 Charnwood had 512 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 400 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, Charnwood would have been able to raise a further £38,904.53 had these properties not had student exemptions. An equivalent amount of RSG before floors and ceilings was therefore provided to Charnwood with respect to the properties with student exemptions.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

419 c380-1W;419 c382-3W; 162015

Session

2003-04

Subjects

Housing Local government finance Multiple occupation Students Revenue support grant Charnwood Charnwood Borough Council

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk