HOMEOWNERS who recycle their rubbish and insulate their houses properly will get council tax discounts of £100 a year, Jack McConnell has vowed.
The First Minister's pledge, to be contained in Labour's forthcoming election manifesto, will form part of a Climate Change Bill which the party will table if they are returned to power after May's Holyrood vote.
The actual reductions being offer
ed would be left up to individual councils to decide. However, officials say they believe the £100 figure to be appropriate, amounting to a 10% reduction from the average Band D rate.
It represents the first attempt in Britain to link local taxation to green incentives, as ministers seek new ways to try to persuade households to consider climate change in their everyday lives.
Houses would be granted the reduction if, for example, they had cavity wall insulation and draught-proofing measures which reduced energy bills.
Evidence that homeowners were recycling and composting could also ensure they qualified for the cut.
The move comes after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned last week that global temperatures could rise by as much as 6°C by the end of this century. Melting polar ice caps are likely to cause sea levels to rise by as much as 17 inches, it added, destroying thousands of miles of the world's coastal regions.
In a speech tomorrow, McConnell will urge "each and every person" in Scotland to examine their actions to see where they can reduce the impact on the planet. But, in a significant change of tone, he is to reject measures which penalise 'bad' behaviour, instead hoping that he can change habits by offering incentives like the tax discount.
Councils welcomed Labour's proposals last night, but warned there could be significant difficulties in implementing the measure. McConnell has not yet offered firm details of exactly how the new scheme would be funded or implemented.
If every one of Scotland's households qualified for the £100 levy, it would cost councils £227m a year to implement, depriving them of a significant portion of their income.
However, McConnell said
: "We will... legislate to create the opportunity for local authorities to provide discounts in the council tax to households where people are recycling their goods or have installed energy-efficient measures."
He said the incentive scheme marked a shift in emphasis.
"We need to get into a different mindset so that we are incentivising people for reducing their waste rather than charging people for having waste," he said.
The cash discount is expected to be offered as a fixed sum in council areas - offering a proportionally greater discount for people in smaller homes.
A spokesman for the Green Party said: "These things are great ideas but our main criticism is that it is pointless talking about little initiatives here and there while still continuing to push on with a plan to treble aviation and increase road use in Scotland. Labour have plenty of gimmicks to make themselves look serious but when you look at the whole policy platform they are a joke."
The full article contains 517 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
