Council Tax Support 


Council Tax Support replaced Council Tax Benefit and Council Tax discounts, exemptions and reductions in April 2013. Some pensioners have been protected but many working age people on benefits have been affected by the change.


Council Tax Support is a local system of help for people who pay Council Tax, and replaced a national system of support for people who couldn’t afford to pay a full Council Tax bill.


From April 2013, local councils introduced their own Council Tax Reduction schemes, deciding which groups of people to help. 


Under the previous system, the government paid the bill for Council Tax benefits, discounts, exemptions and reductions. In 2013-14, each council had a pot of money to share out between people who needed help, but the amount of money available to pay for Council Tax Support was cut by 10%. Since 2014-15, there has been no separate allocation. 


The impact of the introduction of Council Tax Support 


While a minority of English local authorities managed to absorb the funding reduction (by scrapping discounts on second homes, for example) and did not pass on the cut, the majority are now sending out Council Tax bills to low-income residents, many of whom had never paid Council Tax before the changes were introduced. The cuts were not passed on in Scotland or Wales.


In January 2015, the Local Government Association (LGA) reported that rising numbers of families on low incomes are now facing bigger council tax bills because of the shortfall in government funding for Council Tax Support. Many councils warned that they would have to ask those earning the least to pay more, or make even bigger cuts to already squeezed local services. 


The LGA said that the gulf between the money that government gives councils to fund local schemes and the cost of protecting discounts for those who previously qualified for council tax benefit is getting bigger every year. Local authorities would have needed to find an additional £1 billion to keep discounts as they were under council tax benefit in the first three years after it was scrapped. 


As a result many areas have now introduced minimum payments for people who previously would have been exempt from paying council tax. The LGA’s Council tax support: the story continues report laid bare the impact of the government’s funding cut and showed that: 


• only 45 councils out of 326 continued to provide the same level of discount available under the old council tax benefit regime — 13 fewer than in 2013-14; 


• in 244 council areas, all householders have to pay at least some council tax regardless of income — 15 more than in 2013-14; 


• one in seven councils (14%) said they definitely planned to change their discount scheme — 83% said they would not change their existing discount scheme, despite funding reductions;


• only 27% of councils said they would maintain their current scheme beyond 2015-16. Most were unable to say due to uncertainties over future funding for local government; and 


• the decline in council tax collection rates in 2013-14 — only the second since 1993 — was bigger in areas where newly-introduced minimum payments were higher. 


The full report is available at http://www.local.gov.uk/documents/10180/6869714/L14-635+Council+tax+support+report_v03/ad9031f0-d982-428d-bf98-5418b74a851c. 


Appeals against a decision about Council Tax Reduction are made through the Valuation Tribunal rather than through the independent Social Security and Child Support Tribunal (https://www.valuationtribunal.gov.uk/your-appeal-type/council-tax/council-tax-reduction).