August 28, 2007

Business rate rise to fund public transport

According to a report by the Centre of Cities Think Tank, local authorities could easily raise around £10 billion for the use in public transport projects, one of which could be the London Cross Rail project, which would mean trains would not need to terminate in London.

By creating a supplementary business rate the larger cities in the UK could also fund projects such as the Metro Link in Manchester and the work needed on the New Street Station in Birmingham.

What happens at the moment is the local authorities collect business rates, send it to central government and then it is returned to pay for specific projects. Whereas local business rates would see the money collected locally spent on local projects, therefore it would follow that the more business rates collected the better the community and transport infrastructure would be.

This sounds ok, but it would lead to a situation where large towns and cities have large amounts of money to spend on themselves, while cities and towns that are struggling would have a lot less and therefore may fall into decline.

Source [Guardian]