The council tax rates currently applied on properties in England are based on eight tax bands last reviewed in 1991. The Labour government had proposed to review the bands way back in 2007 but gave up the proposal after the Welsh revaluation in 2005 placed over a third of the properties in a higher band. It was left for the new government to decide after elections.
The council tax bill over the last decade has already doubled and due to increase in house prices a revaluation of the bands could have pushed nearly 7 million homes in to higher tax bands. So the government has now decided that there will be no revaluation of the bands during the lifetime of the current parliament i.e. until 2015.
