"Burnham premium" set to add £556 to average bills by 2030, while billions flow to asylum hotels, net zero vanity projects and Whitehall pet schemes
Labour is preparing an £18 billion tax raid on more than 25 million households across England, it can be revealed, in a move that will see the national council tax take soar by 43 per cent before the end of the decade, piling pressure on working families already battered by years of stagnant wages and rising prices.
New figures, extracted from the Treasury through a series of parliamentary questions and shared with the Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent fiscal watchdog, show that local authorities will net £58.8 billion in council tax by 2030/31, up from £41.2 billion in 2024/25. The Conservatives have branded the increase the "Burnham premium", warning that it will hit households "in every postcode" and push the average Band D bill up by roughly £556 a year.
The revelations sit uncomfortably alongside Andy Burnham's repeated pledge, made throughout his leadership campaign and since entering Downing Street, that tackling the cost of living would be his "number one priority". For millions of families choosing between heating and eating, that promise is beginning to look hollow.
"Labour said working people would come first. Instead, they've come last... behind asylum hotels, behind net zero vanity projects, and behind a Whitehall relocation scheme nobody asked for. £18 billion is being clawed out of 25 million households through the most regressive tax we have, one that doesn't care if you're a pensioner on a fixed income or a family already stretched to breaking point. This isn't devolution, it's a blank cheque for mayors to hike bills while ministers wash their hands of the consequences. Andy Burnham built his career promising to stand up for ordinary people, now he's exporting the same model that's seen Greater Manchester's precept rise 127% straight to your doorstep. Working Britain didn't vote for the Burnham premium. Labour needs to scrap this raid. Cut the asylum hotel bill, not the family budget." - Claire Bullivant, CEO Great British PAC
The numbers the Government did not want you to see
The detail matters, because this is the first time the Treasury has publicly stated its expectations for the total council tax take in England alone. According to the answers provided to MPs, the annual change in council tax levels up to 2030/31 is expected to run at between 4.3 per cent and 4.4 per cent, almost double the current CPI inflation rate of 2.6 per cent.
For context, the average Band D household in England paid £2,280 in council tax in 2025/26, according to official figures published on GOV.UK's live council tax tables. Apply the Treasury's own projected increases, and that figure rises to £2,836 by 2030/31. That is not speculation, it is arithmetic based on the Government's own submissions to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
To put the scale of this in perspective, council tax is not a tax on wealth, it is a tax on occupancy. It falls on the pensioner in a terraced house in Stoke just as it falls on the young family in a semi in Swindon. It makes no allowance for income, no allowance for circumstance, and it must be paid, month in, month out, regardless of whether a household can afford it. An extra £500 a year is not an abstraction for a working class family, it is a month of groceries, a school uniform bill, a car repair that keeps someone in work.
The Manchester model goes national
What makes the figures more alarming still is what comes next. The Prime Minister is set to lay out his fiscal devolution plans, first revealed by The Telegraph, on Friday. Under the proposals, strategic authorities headed by metro mayors would be handed the power to add premiums to council tax in the form of precepts, layering new charges on top of bills that are already forecast to rise at nearly twice the rate of inflation.
The track record here is not encouraging. Since Mr Burnham was elected as Greater Manchester mayor in 2017, the mayoral council tax precept for a Band D property, excluding police, has risen by 127 per cent, from £68 to £154. If that is the model now being exported to every corner of England, taxpayers have every right to be nervous.
Sir James Cleverly, the shadow communities secretary, was blunt. "Andy Burnham is right to want to boost growth across our communities, but his model of Manchesterism is a recipe for soaring taxes in every postcode," he said. "Labour have already baked in £18 billion of council tax rises, and now the former Manchester mayor wants to go further and impose his high tax regional model across England." He called the planned changes "top down regionalism", warning that "what works in Manchester won't be the same for Essex, Cornwall or Cumbria".
The "income tax sharing" plan, also expected to be confirmed on Friday, will hand some English mayors a share of income tax revenue raised in their areas for the first time. Officials argue this will incentivise growth, though the policy is understood to apply initially to the seven most senior regional mayoralties, six of which are held by Labour, including London, Liverpool and Greater Manchester. Critics will note, not unfairly, that the architecture of devolution appears to have been drawn up with a particular political map in mind.
Mr Burnham, announcing the reforms, struck a characteristically defiant tone. "I said we'd take power out of Westminster and carry it into every postcode in the country. Today, we make good on that promise," he said. "I know what it's like to be ignored by politicians in Westminster. I'm not going to make that same mistake now I'm PM."
Why is Labour hurting the working class?
This is the question that ministers have yet to answer convincingly. Council tax is, by design, one of the most regressive levies in the British tax system, falling hardest on those least able to pay. A government that claims to stand for working people is choosing to fund its ambitions through precisely the tax that punishes them most. Earlier this week, Mr Burnham ruled out any suggestion of council tax reform during his premiership, closing the door on the one change that might have made the system fairer while prising open the tap on bills.
Business leaders are worried too. Kate Shoesmith, director of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, warned that devolution could mean more paperwork and more taxes for the private sector, insisting the money "must be focused on the practical barriers businesses face every day, from skills and transport to infrastructure and planning".
There is another way, and the Government knows it
The honest question for Labour is not whether money is needed, councils do face genuine pressures, but why the burden must fall on working households when vast sums are being spent elsewhere on priorities the public never voted for.
Start with illegal migration. The Home Office spent £2.1 billion on hotel accommodation for asylum seekers in the year to March 2025 alone, around £108 million a month, according to the department's own annual accounts, scrutinised by the Home Affairs Select Committee. More than 32,000 people remained in taxpayer funded hotels as of June 2025. Stopping the boats, processing claims rapidly, and ending the hotel racket would free up billions, money that belongs in potholes, adult social care and bin collections, not four star accommodation.
Then there is net zero. The OBR's own analysis puts the net cost of decarbonising the economy at £116 billion over 25 years, and independent estimates, including work published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, suggest the true figure could run into the trillions once the full costs to households, industry and the energy system are counted. Billions in annual subsidies, levies on energy bills and forced transitions could be paused or rephased without abandoning environmental responsibility, simply by matching ambition to affordability.
Nor should the symbolism be ignored. Plans to relocate elements of Downing Street and Whitehall functions to Manchester, at a cost running into the hundreds of millions in relocation, duplication and property expenses, represent the worst kind of political vanity project. Devolution of power is one thing, relocating the machinery of the Prime Minister's office at taxpayers' expense is quite another. That money should stay in the Treasury.
Finally, and most powerfully, there is the growth answer. The Office for National Statistics records around 9.1 million people aged 16 to 64 as economically inactive, not in work and not looking for it, with long term sickness now the single largest driver. Every percentage point of that population moved into employment expands the tax base, reduces welfare spending, and funds public services without touching a single council tax bill. A serious back to work programme, combining benefit reform, occupational health and skills training, would do more for the public finances than any raid on household budgets.
The Government's defence
A Ministry of Housing, Local Government and Communities spokesman said, "Councils have not yet set tax rates beyond this year, and it's inaccurate to suggest so. Individual councils decide the level of council tax in their areas, taking into consideration a range of local factors, but we expect them to fully take into account the impact on taxpayers."
It is a technically correct but politically evasive answer. The £58.8 billion projection is not a Conservative press release, it is the Treasury's own figure, supplied to the OBR. Governments do not get to bank the revenue in their forecasts and then disown the bills when they land on doorsteps.
The coming Budget will reveal how much income tax councils and mayors will be allowed to access under the new regime. Until then, 25.6 million households across England have been given fair warning, the era of the Burnham premium has begun, and it is working Britain that will pay for it.
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