Ms Anne Gunnell:

What I would say, first of all, is that there are some allowances for deferral within the LPT and account is taken of hardship cases. We encourage the regular revaluation of the tax. The fact that we did not have those revaluations for a number of years meant that the LPT was not functioning as it should. Last year, when the revaluation was done, there was an attempt to take account of the fact that property prices had gone up, with the adjustment to the rates, so that the increases in values did not have too much of an impact on people. There was an attempt to take account of the fact that property prices had gone up significantly in the rebasing, the rates applied and the adjustment to the bands. If there is a regular review every four years, that should not have as much of an impact on people.

With every tax we are trying to see what will have the least harmful impact on the economy, and a property tax certainly fits that.