Lobbying the Lyons Enquiry about Student Council Tax @ the Treasury

During my dual role on the NEC and as Bugs President, leading a Housing and Accommodation campaign “for a safe, secure, affordable home for every student” I organised a meeting with one of my former lecturers and University of Birmingham Professor, Sir Michael Lyons. He is currently overseeing an inquiry into the funding of local government and the fairness of council tax (see www.lyonsinquiry.org.uk).

This has lead to Student Council Tax exemption being back on the agenda – we were able to talk to his Inquiry Team about Student Council Tax, the date for calculating the numbers of students in an area and overcoming the current postcode lottery for Postgraduates. Please see below a joint email from Veronica King, Vice President (Welfare) and I about the situation needing your help quickly. I hope you appreciate that the short turn around is because of the lateness of the meeting and being able to get something to you the members before the deadline on the 31st July 2006. Good luck and thanks for your support.

Action needed on Student Council Tax

In 1987, the National Union of Students won a 20% reduction in the poll tax for its members, despite the initial proposal that students pay the full amount. NUS later successfully secured a full student exemption from council tax in 1991 .

However, student exemption from council tax is now back on the agenda with a vengeance. The government’s review of local council tax and the purpose of local government not only presents us with the challenge of defending the rights of our members, but also a really good opportunity to extend them.

Currently there are two problems:

• Local authorities are supposed to be reimbursed by central government for student exemptions. However, the government works out the number of students in an area early in the year – often before students are settled into accommodation - leaving large numbers of students unaccounted for and lots of council tax exemption money not paid every year - about £82.5m a year for English authorities.

• Postgraduates who are writing up their PhDs are currently under a postcode lottery about whether they are council tax exempt or not – depending on their institution/department or supervisor.

If NUS can fight to change the under calculation of students in local authorities and lobby for writing up postgraduates to receive the council tax exemption, we would boost resources in local communities and put postgraduates on an even footing.

A wider campaign about this will be launched as part of the Welfare and Student Rights Campaign but until then students need you to take action…

Please email Michael Lyons before the 31st July 2006 expressing the need for solutions on these issues. Please copy and paste the submission attached and add it to the email – feel free to make changes and add local case studies or examples.

The NUS are following up with this submission: Submission to the Lyons Inquiry

Thank you for supporting this, sorry this is last minute but your co-operation is vital and will go a long way to enabling these changes. We look forward to seeing you at the campaigns launch where you can find our more about how to get involved in this campaign and lots like it.

Richard Angell

National Executive Committee

Veronica King

Vice President (Welfare)

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/richardangell/272704.aspx