Letter: Reactions to the council tax bands
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir: I was disappointed to read your article 'Council tax branded 'recipe for chaos' ' (2 December). I spent the previous day talking to those people who came into the Guildhall at Bath to look at their council tax band, partly to explain how the new tax would work and partly to gauge how acceptable the new bands were.
I know from conversations I had that the vast majority of people who came into the council offices on Tuesday felt that the bandings were about right. Unless people were telling your reporter different things from what they were telling me, your report has been somewhat less than impartial.
Inevitably, when there are hundreds of people looking at their valuation bands, there will be a few who are unhappy. It is misleading to quote just two people from Bath who were displeased with the new bandings to their property when well over 90 per cent of the people I talked to felt that the figures were correct or favourable to them.
One problem may have been caused by the report itself, when one Bath resident felt his house should not have been included in band F of between pounds 160,000 and pounds 320,000. These figures relate to band G. Band F is lower]
Yours faithfully,
D. BUTTON
Assistant City Treasurer
Bath City Council
Bath
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