After waiting three years for its recommendations, the Lyons inquiry offered few crumbs of comfort to those seeking a fairer system of taxation for local services.

The recommendations just published, if ever implemented, may help some of those who currently struggle to meet their bills but they fail to address the root causes of the growing opposition to council tax and are no more than a patching up exercise.

Although the Lyons inquiry acknowledged the unfairness of council tax, it was still unwilling to bite the bullet and propose any radical change for the foreseeable future.

Its proposals for additional bands are merely tinkering with the present system. People living in large houses are not necessarily rich and people living in low-banded houses are not necessarily poor. The inherent unfairness of the present system cannot be addressed by a few changes to property bands.

And as long as the present system remains, the proposed removal of capping on council tax increases will inevitably be the green light for councils to impose further massive rises in council tax.

The prospects are of adding additional charges for waste collection and also a proposed tourist tax, the cost of collecting and administering which would be disproportionate to the amount of additional tax being raised.

As a short-term measure, the proposal to increase the savings limit for council tax benefit eligibility must be welcomed.

However, if the tax was related to income, as most people think it should be, the complete council tax benefits system would be irrelevant, as would the need for regular property revaluations.

Council tax is a large sum for pensioners and others on low incomes to pay, while at the same time a drop in the ocean for high earners. So what did the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, do in his Budget?

The salts of the earth we can't live without, such as nurses and public servants on low incomes, were hit below the belt by abolishing the 10p starting rate of income tax.

Professional footballers and the like, who we can live without, earning giant-sized wage packets for doing what salts of the earth do for pleasure (knocking balls about "after" a hard day's work), were rewarded by the Chancellor with a reduction of 2p off their starting rate of income tax.

  • Dave Bonwick, Oakdene Close, Portslade