BRITAIN’-S RATE PAYMENTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 26, 28 December 1932, Page 8

BRITAIN’-S RATE PAYMENTS.

A GRADUAL REDUCTION. Tho amount of rates collected in England and Wales in the year ended March 31 last was £148,000,000, levied on property, whose assessable value was £265.325.000. Last year's total was £1,000,000 less in rates than the previous year, and £18,000,000 less than in 1923. These facts are revealed by Dr. William A. Robson, lecturer in Industrial and Administrative Law at the London School of Economics, in a statement on ‘‘The Arithmetic of Rates,” issued by the National Association of Local Government Officers.

Rates have been gradually falling during the past five years, the average being 12s 10}d in the pound in 192 S and 11s l£d in 1932.

During the same period the average amount collected per head of the estimated population fell from £4 4s lOd to £3 14s Id. The rates ranged from Is 4d in the £1 for a parish in Nottinghamshire to 2Ss 3d in the £1 for a parish in Glamorgan. It was highly misleading to take the mere poundage rate as an indication whether or not a local authority was spending heavily. Kensington had a rate of only 9s 7d, compared with 16s in Bermondsey, and on the face of it Bermondsey was more extravagant than Kensington.

“But if we look into the matter.” adds Dr. Robson, “we find that the Royal Borough has a rateable value of £3.259,880 —equal to £lB Is per head of the local population—while the rateable value of Bermondsey is only £834,993, or £7 10s per head.”