The Welsh Government has been accused of kicking “long-overdue” council tax reforms into the long grass.

During a debate in the Senedd, Plaid Cymru MS Peredur Owen Griffiths said pausing reforms until 2028 at the earliest typifies a tendency to prioritise the political survival of the first minister over the interests of the people of Wales.

The shadow local government secretary criticised the Welsh Government’s “unilateral” decision to abandon a joint commitment to make council tax fairer by 2026.

Plaid Cymru pulled out of the co-operation agreement two days after Vaughan Gething’s new administration postponed plans to redesign council tax.

During local government questions on 12 June, Mr Owen Griffiths told the Senedd: “This is one of several reasons why we had no option but to withdraw from the agreement.”

Calling for reforms sooner rather than later, he said the regressive nature of council tax places a disproportionate burden on lower-income households.

Mr Owen Griffiths pointed out that Plaid Cymru has tabled an amendment to the local government finance bill to bring council tax reforms forward to April 2025.

Julie James accepted that council tax is not fit for purpose but she cautioned that councils are currently wrestling with lots of challenges.

Suggesting Labour will vote down the amendment, the local government secretary said: “I'm pretty sure that we actually physically can't do it by that date, even if we wanted to.

“We took the view, I think, with a bit of a heavy heart, that it was just a step too far for local government given the set of things that they were currently dealing with.”

In May, the Welsh Government announced that plans to redesign council tax, which were initially pencilled in for as early as April 2025, will be delayed to 2028.

Under the plans, which aim to make council tax fairer, bands could change and Wales’ 1.5 million homes would be revalued for the first time since 2003.

While bills for 70 per cent of people would fall or stay the same, and the total amount raised would be unchanged, 30 per cent of households – about 450,000 homes – could face higher taxes.

The Welsh Government said consultation responses showed a clear appetite for reform but over a slower timeline, and added that a further consultation will be held nearer to 2028 about the scale of the reforms.

MSs backed the general principles of the local government finance bill, which contained the introduce of a five-year cycle for council tax revaluations from 2030 in April.

The Welsh Government launched a consultation into changes to the council tax system that could include extra bands and a revaluation of properties in a bid to make the system "fairer” last November.

It came as house prices in mid and north Wales - and especially in rural Wales where people moved out of cities to take advantage of new remote working rules - have boomed since the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to fairs that any revaluation would hurt those in rural Wales harder.