By LORD HANNINGFIELD, Conservative leader of Essex County Council

I BELIEVE council tax has reached the end of its useful life and should be scrapped. However, before you start jumping up and down for joy, it's a fact of life the costs of local services have to be paid through some means.

How we do just that is, of course, not so clear cut, and is why I am keen to start a public debate on it.

Like the proverbial dead man walking, the days of council tax are well and truly numbered. It's only a matter a time before someone finally puts it out of its misery.

We, therefore, have a fast approaching opportunity to look again at the entire system of funding our local services.

It is clear there are a number of principles any replacement must respect.

Any new system must be fairer and more responsive to what communities and people actually want and see as their priorities.

Part of the problem at the moment with council tax is it's simply not clear why you are paying it, or what it actually gets spent on.

Any system of taxation must crucially have the trust and respect of the people who at the end of the day are being asked to pay it.

People vote when they believe something is at stake.

Yet people too often feel there is little reason to cast their ballot.

Part of the explanation for this, I believe, is the opaqueness of council tax.

Indeed, this perception of unresponsiveness, or impotence, can partly explain declining turnout figures.

Proportionally more people vote each year in the X-Factor TV show final than they do in their local elections.

They may ask, "why should I bother?"

My answer would be - that's exactly my point. You should bother. Everyone should bother.

Because your local authority delivers crucial services worth hundreds of millions of pounds to thousands of people every day. At the end of the day, you are being asked to pay for it.

We should, therefore, have a system of local taxation where people can see what it is actually being spent on and, one step further, how it is making a difference to their lives.

The current fiscal set-up goes a fair way to creating an environment where local government is neither particularly local, nor able to meaningfully govern. As a result, local democracy risks being ill-served.

Council tax also only pays for a quarter of the cost of local services. The rest comes from the treasury.

Central grants, capping, and narrow Whitehall-imposed definitions of where this money should or should not be spent, severely limits the capacity of democratically-accountable councils to deliver local services local people want.

So, what are the alternatives? The short answer is, many and varied.

An alternative property tax, local income or sales taxes, relocalised business rates, an assigned portion of national income tax, or greater use of paying for services as and when you use them.

But it doesn't have to be one of these. It could be several, or a mixture of several.

However, it is now time to start the conversation.

That is why in a few weeks' time I will be publishing a range of possible options I think could address weaknesses of the current system, while providing a number of options on the way forward.

Reforming local authority funding is critically important. Locally funded, locally accountable local government can help revive local democracy. Vibrant engagement in the local - and by extension, national - democratic process is the goal we need to keep in mind.

So I hope over the next few months to start this debate on how we should pay for the services we use at a local level. I would welcome your input.

One thing is certain though, the status quo cannot be an option.