On July 4th, the nation will go to the polls. After much work and input at every level of ACORN, from our members to staff policy team to our elected leaders, we have decided on 4 demands that will be our focus at this election. We are both looking to national parties to deliver the changes we need, but also calling on local candidates to commit to fighting for these areas if they are elected.
Our 4 key areas; housing, transport, bailiffs and council tax; are all issues our members have been campaigning on locally and are of high importance to our communities.
Below each heading you will find links to an online action - to email your local candidates on that issue - and also a link to our policy in full.
Housing for people, not for profit
We need affordable, secure and decent housing.
We know that the long term solution to getting this is investing in and building publicly owned social housing, but we don’t just want to wait for that to happen and are calling on the next government to make the changes that will deliver more safety, security and affordability for tenants now, while investing in social housing for the long term.
Here are the 4 areas our members voted should be the top priority in this election campaign:
- Bring in rent controls: to get a grip on spiralling prices, stop community fragmentation and allow renters a better quality of life.
- End unfair evictions once and for all: to end the insecurity that’s driving down standards and is fuelling the homelessness crisis
- Make all homes safe and healthy: make sure it’s more costly for private landlords, housing associations and councils to ignore disrepair than it is to fix it
- Build council housing: we need massive public investment in public house building to ensure everyone has a safe, secure, affordable home, with the needs of residents and communities at its heart
Read our full policy position on housing here.
Transport
Bring public transport into public ownership, supported by proper investment and run for the common good.
Our public transport system is expensive and unreliable. While railway bosses rake in profits, customers are left with extortionate prices, cancelled services and cramped journeys. We need to bring our railways and our rolling stock back into public ownership.
Our buses should be publicly owned, with routes operated for the convenience of the community, not just for profit. Buses should be brought back into public ownership and management to provide the services we need at a price everyone can afford.
Read our full policy position on transport here.
Bailiffs
End the use of bailiffs to collect council tax debt.
The use of bailiffs to collect council tax debt is creating destitution and ill health for our communities and profits for bailiff companies, but fails to provide councils with revenue. It should be a priority of any incoming government to end this ineffective, unjust and unnecessary practice, and offer new guidance to councils on how to effectively and humanely collect council tax debt.
Read our full policy position on bailiffs here.
Council Tax
Abolish council tax, and replace it with a proportional property tax.
Council tax is an unfair regressive tax, based on outdated land values surveyed in 1991 in England and Scotland and 2003 in Wales. This information is hugely out of date, with the result being that many poorer households pay more council tax than richer households.
More deprived parts of the country, such as the north east and south west, spend the highest proportion of their disposable income on council tax – up to 4.5% – while more affluent areas in London spend the least – as low as 0.8%.
For a fairer system, we should replace council tax, the bedroom tax and stamp duty with a proportional property tax, set at 0.48% of the value of a property per annum, with a surcharge of 0.96% for empty and second homes, and those owned by overseas investors. This would raise a surplus £5.6 billion compared to the replaced taxes, and the tax burden would be spread much more fairly.
Read our full policy position on council tax here.