the ‘appropriate balance’ is the level of CIL which maximises the amount of development in the area. If the CIL charging rate is above this appropriate level, there will be less development than there could be, because CIL will make too many potential developments unviable. Conversely, if the charging rate is below the appropriate level, development will also be less than it could be, because it will be constrained by insufficient infrastructure.

So, because the proposed levy is not going to be zero, the Council obviously thinks that the extra Income Tax, Corporation Tax, Capital Gains Tax, Business Rates, stamp duties and Council Tax receipts the development would generate is not enough to fund necessary infrastructure. Presumably, the bureaucrats who wrote it think there are potential developments out there which developers do not currently believe to be viable because the levy isn’t yet in place.

The borough plans to introduce no levy on office and industrial development, however. Only residential and retail developments will be lucky enough to enjoy the new tax. Retail developments will be hit with a £100 per square metre levy anywhere in the borough whereas residential developments will be subject to one of three levies, depending on where it is. £42/m2 in the least affluent third, £140/m2 in the middle and £385/m2 for new homes in the most affluent third of the borough.

If the levy is supposed to finance infrastructure, why would the that required infrastructure per square metre of floorspace developed cost nine times as much in one part of the borough as another? If the levy is set at the level which “maximises the amount of development in the area”, why would developers only find it profitable to develop with a tax nine times as onerous as that in the other section of the borough? And is it really only retail and residential developments which need infrastructure – don’t offices and industrial developments benefit from infrastructure, too?

The answer is that the levy is an attempt to squeeze cash out of development and into town hall coffers. Buildings, obviously, do not require infrastructure. It is, to say the least, highly unlikely that building big expensive houses in the rich part of town requires nine times as much revenue per square metre to fund the additional NHS GP surgeries or local public transport infrastructure as the typically much smaller homes in the poorer part of the borough. The assessment produced by the Council’s consultants possibly ‘captures’ a more honest account of the rationale:

we test the these different developments without CIL, to see if they are viable in their own right and how far they produce a surplus value, or overage, from which CIL may be extracted. Secondly, we consider how much of this estimated surplus value (where it exists) should be captured through CIL.

Merton’s proposed rates are significantly higher than those recommended by the independent consultants, too. In all three areas they have proposed the levy should be 40 per cent above the recommendation (£42, £140 and £385 instead of £30, £140 and £275 per square metre).

The Community Investment Levy is proving to be little more than a naked cash grab by councils like Merton’s that will do little more than take off the pressure to stop wasting money while hitting development hard and with it all the jobs and prosperity it creates. Councils should look harder for savings from waste and factor in new revenues from existing taxes on additional residents and businesses to fund infrastructure projects. Hard pressed taxpayers and homebuyers simply can’t afford the job losses, higher taxes and higher rents that the CIL will create.

And as the councillors continue to insist that they have no option but to increase council tax – despite the Government offering funding to allow for a freeze – figures have now come to light showing the true extent to which those funds are being used to subsidise the trade unions.

Our report into the taxpayer funding of trade unions last November suggested that the two Full Time Equivalent Unison activists being funded by Peterborough City Council (see p.52) were costing £56,385 of council tax payers’ money (based on them each being paid the median gross annual public sector salary of £22,902 and then taking into account pension and NI contributions, taking their cost to £28,192 each).

However, today we can reveal the identities of the two full –time tax-payer funded UNISON activists and how their higher than median salaries are meaning that even more of Peterborough council tax payers’ money is being channelled to the unions than was first thought.

A letter from Cllr Irene Walsh, Peterborough’s Cabinet member for Finance, to Stewart Jackson, Peterborough’s MP, has reached our attention and we have published it online today in order that people can see the costs for themselves.

Rona Hendry is the UNISON branch secretary and will cost the Peterborough council tax payer no less than £43,600 over the coming year. Her branch Assistant Secretary, Mark Burn, is also being fully funded by the taxpayer to the tune of £29,700.

Cllr Walsh adds that when you include the value of free office facilities and other costs, the estimated bill to the Peterborough tax payer of supporting this branch of UNISON is £83,500 – 48% more than the cautious TPA estimate.

We maintain that while trade unions can have a role to play in workplaces, it should not be for taxpayers to foot their bills – that is exactly why people pay a subscription to a union. Likewise, they should be invoiced for their taxpayer-funded offices, yet in her letter Cllr Walsh opines that “I do not believe it would be in the interests of promoting good industrial relations to do so.”

It’s a shame that Cllr Walsh is not more interested in promoting better taxpayer value for money in Peterborough by stopping this subsidy to the unions and more closely monitoring other staff time taken off for union meetings – activities which she says are “more difficult to monitor”.

This makes it all the more disappointing that civic leaders are intent on hiking the council tax in Peterborough.

TaxPayers’ Alliance research and official statistics put this rise in context, and suggest some areas where savings could be made instead:

• Over the past 10 years residents in Surrey County Council have seen their Council Tax bills increase by 72 per cent
• The Chief Executive at Surrey County Council received total remuneration of £253,133 in 2010/2011. There were at least 19 staff who received more than £100,000 at the authority in 2009/10
• Councillors’ allowances at Surrey County Council cost taxpayers £1,582,000 in 2010-11
• Taxpayers paid (via employer contributions) £32,124,000 to the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) at Surrey County Council in 2010-11, an increase of £453,000 from the previous year
• 55 councillors in Surrey have enrolled themselves on the LGPS. Many authorities choose not to allow councillors on to the scheme, recognising the historically volunteer role of local politicians
• The estimated cost of union officials at Surrey Council is £284,743, these are staff paid for by taxpayers but work for the trade unions. This does not include the cost of other support provided such as office space or the administration of union fees
• Surrey Police Authority are increasing the size of their Council Tax precept, further adding to each household’s bill
• The TPA have previously highlighted other areas of wasteful spending by Surrey County Council including articles such as  ‘The cost of mobile phones’ and ‘Surrey County Council get the latest toy’. Surrey has appeared in our regular ‘Non-job of the week’ feature in: February 2011, March 2011 and August 2011

Matthew Sinclair, Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“The council have let people in Surrey down by imposing a big hike in council tax on residents, so many of whom already struggle to pay. Over the last ten years there has already been a drastic increase in council tax bills and, with so many other pressures on their finances, this is the last thing families in the county need. Surrey needs to follow the example of other local authorities who have shown it is possible to combine quality services with lower bills, and deliver much better value for money.”

‘At that point in 1996, legislation set the mayoral precept at £60,000,’ said Ward in a letter to the local newspaper. ‘Subsequent inflation would have taken this figure to just under £100,000 in the current financial year. Somehow, in just over 15 years, the Charter Trustees have raised the precept to £209,000.’

And what exactly do we get for this money? ‘Throughout the year the Mayor is required to perform two basic functions,’ says his website. ‘The Mayor is the Chairman of the Charter Trustees,’ which grants him the money, and City Ambassador, whose ‘events range from civic receptions to carol services.’ Amongst these onerous task are visits from Bath to its various Twin Cities. On these jaunts, ‘the Mayor is normally joined by the Clerk and two other Charter Trustees.’

Bath is twinned with four cities: Aix-en-Provence, France; Alkmaar in the Netherlands; Braunschweig, Germany; and Kaposvar in Hungary. Bath also has a partnership agreement with Beppu, Japan, and is a sister city to Manly, Australia. Recently, I attended a Bath Mayoral meeting at which a charming gentleman from Ghana was trying to sell the idea of twinning with his city of Cape Coast, apparently based on his own pleasurable time spent in Bath as a student and some reference to the chocolate trade. The Mayor is considering it. Quite who gains from this—apart from the Mayor and his mates who go on jolly trips—I do not know, but one penny of taxpayers’ money spent on this nonsense is one penny too much!

The Mayor of Bath announced recently that he is freezing his current expenses. But, as Malcolm Ward pointed out, these have already ready risen considerably more than inflation. He should be cutting his precept. At the end of a recent meeting of the Charter Trustees, perhaps sensing some antagonism from the public gallery, the Mayor asked everyone to join him for drinks afterwards. Mr Ward refused. ‘If I had gone to the parlour,’ he said, ‘I am sure I could have more than recouped my coming year’s contribution to the mayoral precept.’

To read the full report, including a breakdown by local council, click here

Click here for the complete press release

The key findings of this research are:

• More than £135,000 was spent on flights by councils in Hampshire between April 2009 and November 2011
• Southampton City Council spent the most with a total of £55,687
• Only 2 councils, Hart District and Havant Borough, did not pay for any flights
• East Hampshire District and Fareham Borough Councils spent £342 on flights to attend a Local Government Association conference in Leeds
• Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council spent almost £12,000 on flights to EU conferences paid for by taxpayers through EU budgets
• Hampshire County Council spent £45,000 on flights, including £1,395 to send staff to an Assembly of European Regions Bureau meeting
• Test Valley Borough Council spent £431 to send an employee to Chicago to attend the International Institute of Municipal clerks’ conference
• Eastleigh Borough Council spent over £500 on flights to send staff on Arts and Tourism training
• More than £5,500 was spent on flights for on twinning visits between April 2009 and November 2011. This includes £2,168 by Fareham Borough Council visiting Vannes in France and Pulheim in Germany; £1,696 spent by Gosport Borough Council visiting Royan in France; and £1,457 by Rushmoor Borough Council visiting Oberursel in Germany
• Hampshire County Council spent £101 on a flight to Brussels on a fact-finding visit for a new member of staff to increase their knowledge of EU opportunities to help secure additional grants

To read the full report, including a breakdown by local council, click here

Click here for the complete press release

John Henvest, Hampshire TPA activist, said:

“It is shocking that some council staff have been jetting around at taxpayers’ expense. These local authorities need to find millions in savings in the coming years and with modern technology like video conferencing they needn’t spend large sums of taxpayers’ money on plane tickets. It is great that two authorities in Hampshire were prudent and didn’t spend a penny of taxpayers’ money on flights, however, others need to control the amount being spent on air travel.”

The release of the Whole of Government Accounts has led to fresh scrutiny of the PFI programme with the Independent, for example, reporting that there was a liability of “£131.5bn on the private finance initiative (PFI) such as hospital and school building – four times more than the assets secured by the deals”.

It doesn’t sound good.  But does that mean PFI is an inherently bad way of paying for worthwhile investments?  Not necessarily.

The Whole of Government Accounts mention that the lifetime of a PFI contract is typically 25-30 years.  That is a long commitment that the firms investing in PFI projects are making.  Based on current gilt rates, it would cost even the Government nearly £70 billion to borrow the £30.9 billion book value of the PFI assets.  That is more than double and therefore – just on the basis of that very rough calculation – the risk free cost of capital can account for about half of the difference between the asset value and cost figures.  If you want to invest a pile of capital in something then one way or another you are going to pay a price for that, however you finance it.

This isn’t a simple, risk free investment.  The point of PFI is to transfer risk and management responsibility to private sector firms, who are generally required to turn over a quality hospital or something like that at the end of the process.  That way you avoid the mismanagement that has seen too many major projects go way over budget and arrive late.  In 2009, the National Audit Office found that most PFI projects are “built close to the agreed time, price and specification”.  But again private sector firms have to be paid a price for taking that risk on their investment and managing the project.  If the interest rate goes up to about 5 or 6 per cent then that can explain what looks like a quadrupling in costs.

All that doesn’t mean that PFI is always, or even generally, good value.  There have been some ridiculous stories about the cost of replacing lightbulbs or electrical sockets which suggest something funny could be going on in the contract.  This wouldn’t be the first time politicians and bureaucrats have let canny operators rip off the taxpayer.  And it is important that we have a more honest account of the real liabilities that politicians have been racking up on taxpayers’ behalf.  Mike Denham explains the issue in a video below.  But let’s be realistic about the cost of PFI and how that compares to other ways of financing major investments.

As Labour MP Chris Evans said: “If he didn’t agree with her, he should have said so – so he should now forfeit the £17,207 he is entitled to.”

Tim Farron, President of the Liberal Democrats said it would be right for him to “take a lead” in these tough times..

I agree that Mr Huhne should show he is sensitive to the economic climate and the circumstances surrounding his resignation by declining his severance package. Particularly at a time when taxpayers can ill afford it.

In the wake of the expenses scandal we revealed that many MPs who had fiddled their expenses were entitled to resettlement grants. These one-off payments are not the same as severance payments but are worth 50-100 per cent of an MP’s annual salary, dependent on their age and length of service. At the time we called for these grants to be abolished entirely as MPs are aware that they take their job on a five-year fixed contract, so there is no reason to hand them these payments. Similarly if an MP or minister, like nine-homes-Huhne leaves office under the cloud of such scandal as this, they should no longer be entitled to golden goodbyes like severance payments at taxpayers’ expense. Huhne should save himself any further embarrassment and forfeit his payoff, regardless of whether or not he is later cleared of these charges.

Early Day Motions are often referred to by their critics as “parliamentary graffiti”, since several thousand of these motions are tabled by MPs every year in Parliament but are never debated: they are merely printed alongside other Commons business papers the day after they are tabled, and reprinted on future days whenever they attract new signatories.

They can cover virtually any topic, and MPs often use them as a way of highlighting a local issue or cause, after which they can tell their local papers that they have “tabled a motion in Parliament” on the issue of the day in their constituency.  You can see that recent entries on the current list of EDMs includes one celebrating the Golden Anniversary of Livingston New Town and another wishing good luck to the Northern Ireland football team, for example.

Those examples are clearly quite parochial, but the motions can equally apply to national or international issues, and on a positive note, they offer MPs a way of setting out their stance on free vote issues or getting a head of steam behind a particular campaign. No one could doubt that getting a couple of hundred MPs’ signatures in support of an EDM is a good way of demonstrating strength of feeling on an issue. However, if truth be told,  very few of the EDMs ever reach that level of support. Instead, most languish with a couple of dozen signatures and are forgotten very quickly.

The big problem with EDMs is their cost, as cited in Craig Woodhouse’s blog. He wrote that they end up costing £290 each – equivalent to £1 million a year – which is quite clearly an exorbitant amount.

But I would not want to see EDMs abolished altogether: as I said above, occasionally they can be a useful tool for demonstrating strength of feeling on an issue and one such example was the Save General Election Night campaign I ran in a previous life. The EDM on that issue in 2009 attracted 220 signatures from across the political spectrum – the 20^th-most signed of the 2,424 EDMs in 2008-09 – and helped build support for a change in the law.

I’m pretty sure that the lion’s share of the cost of EDMs must go in the paper, ink and administration of the daily printing of the EDMs, so I suggest that in order to save money they should not be printed as a matter of course. Instead, EDMs should become an MPs-only version of the Government e-petitions site: it would surely cost a fraction of the current system to administer, but would not remove that potentially powerful mechanism from an MP’s armoury.

What’s more, if you want to make EDMs more meaningful, topical and relevant, the BackBench Business Committee should be encouraged to take note of the most popular EDMs when deciding which issues it wants brought to the floor of the House in backbench time.

It’s the first time that a member of our team has been a panellist on Question Time and we’re immensely proud that Emma will be representing the TaxPayers’ Alliance tonight.

The show will be on BBC One from 10.35 pm this evening. We hope that you can tune in and cheer Emma on, but if not you will also be able to catch the programme online through the BBC’s iPlayer afterwards.

Tonight’s panel, chaired by presenter David Dimbleby, will be:

Emma Boon, Campaign Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance
Alan Duncan MP, International Development Minister
Sadiq Khan MP, Shadow Justice Secretary
Digby Jones, former Head of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI)
Phil Redmond, creator of Grange Hill and Brookside

While Question Time is on the air, there’s always a lot of online debate about the issues being discussed by the panellists. Viewers use the twitter hashtag #bbcqt and if you’re using the social media site tonight be sure to lend your support to Emma @emmaboon and let us @the_tpa know what you think.

Cllr Sasha Gillard-Loft owed £210 when Bodmin magistrates issued a liability order against her in 2010. She claimed financial hardship but only weeks before the court order she had voted against the council’s proposed budget—a potential breach of the Local Government Finance Act, which bans councillors from voting on budgets when they are in arrears with the council tax. She could face a fine of £1000.

Cllr Alex Folkes had three liability orders against him, having even forgotten the third one during an interview on the subject. The council had to take him to court twice in 2010 and once in 2011 for not paying council tax between March and September 2010. He later said: ‘It was wrong of me. I didn’t prioritise it.’ Cllr Jan Powell’s husband, Tony, a former Mayor of Liskeard, was responsible for the £833.85 summons but claimed he had no knowledge of it to begin with. He then offered to pay the money in instalments. Cllr Chris Pasco owned the most money, a sum of £1800, which was the subject of a liability order in 2011.

None of these councillors’ names were revealed by Cornwall Council following Freedom of Information requests. They refused to identify them, claiming it would be a breach of data protection laws. Journalists, however, found the names by ploughing through magistrates’ court records.

To reach the point where these councillors have already ignored several council reminder notices so that taxpayers’ money has to be spent to bring them to the court, indicates a wilful disregard of the rules that they would expect everyone else to abide by, or a level of personal chaos that makes you wonder if they are fit to hold public office and run our affairs for us. Either way, they deserve to be named and shamed!