DAVID MILIBAND signalled a radical shake-up of local government services yesterday as he announced that property revaluation would be delayed until after the next election.

Opposition parties and council chiefs accused the Government of “resetting the clock on a ticking time bomb” after Mr Miliband, the Minister for Local Government and Communities, admitted that council tax reform would be postponed for at least five years. Instead he has asked Sir Michael Lyons to extend his inquiry into local government finance to look at a changing role for town halls.

Sir Michael, who had been due to complete his review in December, will now study whether functions such as social services and children’s services should be devolved from local authority control.

From next year, education cash will go directly to schools and this could be mirrored in other areas, empowering neighbourhoods but weakening town halls. Mr Miliband claimed that delaying property revaluation until after 2010 was due to Sir Michael’s extended inquiry. But Sir Michael told The Times yesterday that he had opposed Mr Miliband’s decision to postpone revaluation, due in 2007, as it had nothing to do with his new remit.

Sir Michael, who will now produce a final report due next autumn said that he would have understood a delay of 12 months to see how changes in the education budget had bedded down, but he agreed that a longer delay could only be due to political reasons.

Ministers were stung by the political backlash after the revaluation in Wales this April when a third of householders had to move up a property band and only 8 per cent moved down. It has been 14 years since the last valuation in England and property prices have risen sharply since.

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