Fairer Council Tax: consultation analysis

Overview of responses received

The consultation remained open for submissions from 12 July 2023 to 20 September 2023 and received 15,628 responses. The majority of responses (99%, 15,547 respondents) were submitted through the online platform hosted by Citizen Space, while 81 responses (1%) were received directly via email.

The segmentation of the responses by Council Tax shows that the majority of respondents (86%) pay Council Tax for properties belonging to Bands E-H, which are the bands affected by the proposed increase, 8% of respondents are in Bands A-D, and 6% had other or no answers to this question. Overall, the most represented band is Band E, with 31% of respondents paying Council Tax in that band.

The responses can be divided by respondent type as follows: (i) 15,537 (99.4%) responses from individuals, (ii) 87 (0.5%) responses from organisations, and (iii) 4 (<0.1%) responses where the respondent type was not stated. 15 responses were identified by the research team as being submitted on behalf of councils^[7], and analysis of these responses have been presented separately for both closed-format and open-format questions.

The local authority area with the greatest number of respondents was Fife, followed by the City of Edinburgh and Glasgow City. The Shetland Islands, Na h-Eileanan Siar and the Orkney Islands had the fewest number of respondents.