Council Tax Support consultation
The council is currently consulting on a number of proposed changes to its Council Tax Support scheme and would like to hear your views.
Council Tax Support helps residents on low incomes pay some of their Council Tax. Working age people can get support of up to a maximum of 90% of their bill. Pensioners can receive support for up to 100% of their bill and are not affected by the proposals.
You are working age if you have not yet reached State Pension Age. State Pension Age is not fixed and depends on your date of birth. You can find out more by using this pension age calculator.
The council is consulting on the following changes to the Council Tax Support scheme for 2020/21:
- Introducing an income ‘grid’ scheme for all working age applicants replacing the current means tested approach which was based on the previous Council Tax Benefit scheme (Change 1)
- Introducing a standard non-dependant deduction of £10 per week (Change 2)
- Changing the claiming process for all applicants who receive Universal Credit (Change 3)
- Removing the current earnings disregards and replacing them with a standard disregard of £25 a week (Change 4). Earnings disregards are an amount of money that are not counted when working out the amount of help households receive. Currently this amount of money varies, with some lower than £25 a week and others higher
- Disregarding Carer’s Allowance which is currently taken into account as income (Change 5)
- Replacing any lost disability premiums in the current CTS scheme with an equivalent income allowance (Change 6)
- Setting a minimum income floor for all self-employed applicants at 35 hours per week multiplied by the National Living Wage to fully align with Universal Credit (Change 7)
Find out how some of the proposed changes could affect different types of household.
Have your say
Find out more about the proposed changes and give us your views by completing our questionnaire by 5pm on Monday 30 September 2019.
Next steps
We will listen carefully to what residents tell us and take the responses into consideration when making a final decision on the 2020/21 scheme.
Following the decision, the full results from the consultation will be available on the council’s website.
If the proposed changes are made to the Council Tax Support scheme, they will take effect from 1 April 2020. The council will consider the impact of the scheme every year and consult again if it thinks further changes need to be made.