In the grim Labour Autumn Budget 2025, the Chancellor announced owners of family homes valued at over £2,000,000 would be hit with an additional High Value Council Tax Surcharge (HVCTS) of at least £2,500 from 2028. For homes worth over £5 million the charge will reach £7,500 and this surcharge will be uprated annually by the Consumer Price Index. Despite this new charge being levied on top of existing council tax, the money raised will not, in fact, be going to the local authority, but instead will head straight to the Treasury.
The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts this will raise £400 million by 2029/30, although they have said they are highly uncertain about this predicted tax take and would adjust their forecast after consultation. Whether a homeowner will be forced to pay this additional tax will depend on the Valuation Office Agency’s assessment of 2026 valuations. In reality, due to years of house price inflation, for many people in parts of London, the South East, and those in rural areas with horses, smallholdings and other animals, it will be prove a very unwelcome surprise. This is not just going to hit the super-rich.
Concerns have also been rightly raised that the HVCTS will create a cliff edge at the £2 million-mark, distorting behaviours and market dynamics across the board. Aneisha Beveridge, of Hamptons estate agents, has said that “house price appreciation is largely out of homeowners’ control, and if the threshold isn’t adjusted over time, more people could be pulled into the tax simply because their property value has risen (along with overall inflation) – not because they’re any wealthier”. Meanwhile Jeremy Karpel, a director at TK International estate agents, has said the family home tax was “an obvious attack on the London market and everywhere around the M25”.
Let’s be honest, who actually believes that, once commenced, this ceiling won’t easily move downwards and that those in commuter belts homes won’t become another pocket to pick, on call to help out the Labour run treasury?
While it's been reported Rachel Reeves will ‘allow people to defer paying the new tax until they move house or after they die amid concerns that “asset-rich, cash poor” homeowners – especially pensioners – could be forced to sell their homes to cover the cost’,
This is cold comfort indeed. As Shadow Chancellor Rt Hon Mel Stride MP summed up,
“Under Labour, nothing is safe – not your job, your home, your savings, or your pension.”
I am aware that, once again, our farmers and working farms have also raised concerns about how this family house tax will apply to their family farms. Already facing the disastrous family farm tax, attacks on their businesses and families’ futures along with uncertainty around national food security, the Chancellor must provide urgent clarity on how our farmers will be treated under these plans. No one can disagree with the President of the Country Land and Business Association, Gavin Lane, when he says “a farm is not a luxury home. It is a working business”.
I thoroughly agree with my colleague the shadow Chancellor, Rt Hon Mel Stride MP, when he said that the Government is “waging a war on farmers” and “having been whacked by the family farm tax last year, farmers now face a double hit with Rachel Reeves's family home tax”.
Family farms are being rendered unviable and essential food production put under threat by yet another attack on our countryside food producers.
Who can’t see this other than Labour themselves?
