“I helped set council tax in 1991 – here’s why it’s now unfair”

Chris Husson-Martin spent many afternoons in the spring of 1991 driving around Oxfordshire villages in his blue Vauxhall Cavalier, placing houses into newly created council tax bands.

He was one of hundreds of real estate agents hired by the government to conduct on-the-ground assessments that would determine how much homeowners would have to pay under a new property tax system. That system has not been updated since.

“We were given lists of villages in rural areas and we would spend five or six hours every afternoon driving around and giving everyone a group. We have never entered a property or driven into the driveway. There were some examinations of the hedges, but it certainly wasn’t scientific,” said Husson-Martin, now a director of the Hamptons real estate agency.

The process