I’ve just seen on TV that there is going to be a £150 refund/rebate for those in the lowest Council Tax Bands.
I wonder if any thought has been given to those EXEMPT from Council Tax (i.e. with severe learning difficulties or dementia)?
Please could CUK respond?
Please read the full link …
Households in England, which are in council tax bands A-D, will also receive a £150 rebate. The rebate to bills will be made directly by local authorities from April. This will not need to be repaid. This one-off payment will benefit around 80 per cent of all homes in England and is £1 billion more generous and more targeted towards lower-income families than a VAT cut on energy bills.
On top of this discount, discretionary funding of £144 million will also be provided to support vulnerable people and individuals on low incomes that do not pay Council Tax, or that pay Council Tax for properties in Bands E-H.
That’s great. Thank you.
So people will have to make the effort to chase money from the fund, rather than just be given it automatically? How many are actually going to do that?
Seems to me this is just the UC uplift/legacy benefit thing all over again.
As Council tax is administered by the local council, they will hopefully be dealing with the rebates using information from their records?!
The rebates will happen automatically.
The “discretionary fund” is a different beast and will require applications. This is a certainty. And you can bet that the criteria will be stringent and with much more careful checking than the PPE contracts that produced nothing.
What I find especially galling about this is that he’s doing us a “favour” by handing over £200 that will have to be repaid over 5 years while prices continue to go up every year. How the **** is this helping anyone?
Charles, maybe just a hope that the next election will go their way if they do this???
Doubt it. This is sleight of hand stuff that won’t actually do what it says on the tin, and they’ll be forced to either come out and say “no help for you” or admit that more has to be done.
I think it will be the latter, because by then they’ll be much closer to the prospect of a general election (2023 being the earliest, 2024 the latest), but Sunak is gambling on Johnson being gone by then and Sunak in a new job. He’s obviously after a promotion. And I believe he’s planning on it.
Sunak’s wife comes from an incredibly wealthy family. From other comments he’s made, he doesn’t seem to have much understanding of what it is like to bring up a young family with a limited income. As my son had such high care needs, with no respite available, I could not work. There were times when the kids were growing up that a new pair of knickers was a special treat! All these huge price increases will be terrifying some people.
I remember times like that BB. Plus scraping the butter paper so hubby could have packed lunch for work on the day before payday!
Sadly some families have both parents working but the way prices have shot up and getting so much worse they have reluctantly had the need to go to a food bank.
Pet, where I live there are supposed to be more millionaires than anywhere else outside London.
Nearby Beaulieu has the most expensive road in the country. I often see Porsche, Ferrari, Maclaren cars.
Yet the foodbank is busiest ever.
Like many other places, it’s a town of two halves. Property prices here are sky high, local people have no chance now of owning a home of their own, and the council housing list is very, very long.