Countryside Alliance calls for fuel duty freeze

The Countryside Alliance is urging the chancellor to freeze fuel duties or risk adding further financial pressure to people who live and work in the countryside.

Its chief executive Tim Bonner has written to Rachel Reeves ahead of tomorrow’s (30 October) Budget, setting out the consequences of increasing levies on rural drivers and businesses, who already pay an average of £800 more in fuel than people living in urban areas.

See also: ‘Final plea’ on tax relief to chancellor Reeves before Budget

Reasons include longer drives to carry out everyday activities and unreliable public transport.

Mr Bonner insists that the 5p/litre fuel duty cut, introduced by the Conservative government in 2022 to help ease the cost of petrol and diesel for drivers, must remain.

“Pressure on rural communities’ finances remains, and so we would argue that now is not the time to let the cut lapse,” he wrote.

Fuel duty has been frozen since 2011.

Ms Reeves is under pressure to honour her pledge to protect what Labour referred to as “working people” in its manifesto pledge, people who Mr Bonner says use their cars to travel to work.

The call from the Countryside Alliance to maintain the current fuel duty rate forms part of its campaign to highlight the added costs on people who live in rural areas.

Mr Bonner wants the chancellor to confirm that any future model for road pricing will take account of the extra miles people living in rural areas must drive.

The current model is likely to change in the shift to electric vehicles.

Done properly, changes could address how the system discriminates against rural drivers, Mr Bonner suggests.

Another key request to the chancellor is the removal of VAT on domestic heating fuel which can be done using powers returned to the UK after it withdrew from the European Union.