Video clips show Sir Keir Starmer pledging to freeze council tax “this year” or “next year”.
This is misleading. The video clips in question date from March 2023, and show Mr Starmer pledging to freeze council tax for a year. They do not show Mr Starmer promising a freeze in 2025/26.
Council tax bills are increasing in April after Sir Keir Starmer promised to freeze them.
Labour pledged to freeze council tax “this year” or “next year” back in March 2023, but we’ve found no evidence it pledged to specifically freeze council tax in 2025/26. Labour has said a manifesto pledge to ”not increase taxes on working people” applied to payslip taxes, not council tax, though the meaning of that pledge is disputed.
In recent weeks we’ve seen a number of claims about Labour having pledged to freeze council tax.
The Conservatives have claimed that the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer “promised to freeze it”, and have circulated clips of him appearing to pledge a freeze “this year” or “next year”, while some on social media have said that he made that commitment “last year”.
It comes as millions of households face increases to their council tax bill when the new financial year begins in April.
Mr Starmer did say that Labour would freeze council tax bills were it to be in government, but he made this commitment back in March 2023 and it was only for one year (so would likely have applied to the 2023/24 financial year). We’ve found no evidence that Labour specifically pledged to freeze council tax bills in 2025/26—the party’s 2024 manifesto didn’t directly mention council tax.
Labour has said a manifesto pledge to ”not increase taxes on working people” referred to taxes in people’s payslips, which wouldn’t include council tax—though the meaning of that pledge wasn’t clear and continues to be disputed.
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At Prime Minister’s Questions on 12 March, the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said with reference to the Prime Minister: “The average council tax bill is increasing by over £100 in April after he promised to freeze it.”
A video posted on social media by the Conservative party last month appeared to make a similar claim. It featured several clips of Mr Starmer pledging to freeze council tax “this year” or “next year”, without any indication of when those comments were made. The video was posted with the caption: “Keir Starmer thought he could get away with his council tax betrayal. But we kept the receipts.”
It’s also been reported that the Conservatives plan to make this claim a central part of their campaign for the upcoming May local elections.
Separately, we’ve seen a number of related claims from social media users about what Labour pledged.
A video with two clips of Mr Starmer stating that Labour would freeze council tax bills has recently been shared on Facebook with text overlaid which says “what Keir Starmer said about council tax last year”. Another post shared a video of Mr Starmer’s March 2023 speech with a caption claiming he made the pledge “in 2024”.
Labour’s specific pledge to freeze council tax for a year dates from March 2023.
Various different clips shared by the Conservatives of Mr Starmer pledging to freeze council tax “this year” or “next year” were filmed on 30 March 2023. (A clip they shared of him calling in Parliament for an “immediate freeze in council tax bills” is from 10 May 2023, while we’ve not been able to track down a further clip of him calling for a council tax freeze.) The clips shared in the Facebook post also date from March 2023.
Campaigning ahead of the May 2023 local elections, Mr Starmer announced that were Labour in government, it would freeze council tax bills for a year in response to the cost of living crisis.
A press release published by the party in March 2023, which Full Fact has seen but which does not appear to be published online, revealed that the policy would have involved a “one-year” freeze funded by increasing the so-called windfall tax on oil and gas company profits.
But at the time, neither Mr Starmer nor then-shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves committed to implementing a freeze if Labour won the next general election. Sky News also reported that the policy was “not a solid pledge for the next general election”.
The Conservative party video also features two additional clips, both filmed during last year’s election campaign. One shows then-shadow health secretary Wes Streeting stating “none of those pledges in our manifesto requires increases in council tax”, while the other shows then-shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves saying Labour was “not planning to reform council tax”.
Mr Streeting was responding [24:00] to being asked if he would rule out increasing council tax beyond what was set out in government spending plans (which assumed a maximum increase of 4.99% a year), and while his comments were not entirely clear, they were subsequently reported as him refusing to rule out council tax rises. Meanwhile Ms Reeves appeared to be referencing speculation over whether Labour would seek to re-organise council tax bands.
During the 2024 election campaign Labour ruled out making changes to council tax bands.
Ultimately, Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto did not directly mention council tax.
It’s been suggested that increasing council tax represents a breach of Labour’s manifesto commitment to “not increase taxes on working people”. But as we’ve explained in our Government Tracker, the wording of that pledge was unclear, so what might constitute a breach of this pledge is disputed.
Since the election, ministers and the Treasury have said the “working people” tax pledge applied to taxes in people’s payslips, which would not include council tax. And even prior to the election Labour suggested the commitment did not extend to council tax, with Mr Starmer and other senior figures apparently refusing to rule out council tax increases when asked in interviews.
We’ve not found any examples of Labour making any specific commitment on freezing council tax during the general election campaign, or other evidence of the party pledging to freeze council tax in 2025/26. Fact checkers at PA Media have also reported that Labour’s council tax pledge did not apply to 2025/26.
We have twice asked the Conservative party if it has any evidence that Mr Starmer pledged to freeze council tax in the coming financial year specifically, but have not received a response.
We’ve also approached Labour for comment.
In 2025/26 the average Band D council tax bill in England is set to increase by 5.0%. The majority of local authorities are increasing council tax by the maximum they are permitted to, with only eight of the 384 local authorities seeing no increase to their average Band D bill. This means the vast majority of households in England will see their council tax increase.
Council tax is a devolved issue, meaning the UK government only sets the framework for council tax in England. Average council tax bills are also set to increase in 2025/26 in Scotland and Wales, while Northern Ireland uses a different system.
Labour has not announced any wider council tax reforms since entering government. In a statement on 3 February, following the publication of the local government finance settlement for 2025/26, the Deputy Prime Minister and housing secretary Angela Rayner confirmed that the new settlement “maintains the previous government’s policy on council tax increases”.
Under the settlement local authorities with responsibility for social care are usually required to hold a referendum if they wish to increase council tax by 5% or more (consisting of a maximum 2.99% increase in the “core” council tax precept and 1.99% increase in the social care precept). This is the same threshold that was in place in 2024/25 and 2023/24.
However, Ms Rayner also confirmed that six councils had been given permission to increase council tax by more than 5% without requiring a referendum in 2025/26, so some people will see their council tax increase beyond the 5% principle.(Similar exceptions have also been made for local authorities in the past—for example in 2023 Croydon Borough Council was given permission to increase council tax by 15% without holding a referendum.)
One of the Facebook posts we looked at claims that “Angela Rayner has signed off on 10% Council Tax increases”. But of the six councils granted a higher referendum threshold, only one (Bradford City Council) has been given a referendum threshold of 10% (meaning it can increase council tax by a maximum of 9.99% without requiring a referendum). The remaining five councils have all been granted thresholds between 7.5% and 9%.
Misleading claims about politicians have the potential to affect people’s opinions of individuals, parties or how they choose to vote. We often see these types of claims spread widely online.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because Mr Starmer didn’t pledge to freeze council tax “last year” or in “2024”, but in March 2023, and his pledge at the time was for a one-year freeze. There’s no evidence Labour pledged to specifically freeze council tax in 2025/26.
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