COULD THE AUTHORITIES FACE PUBLIC DISORDER OVER COUNCIL TAX BENEFIT CHANGES?

First Published By: The Westminster

The issue of cuts to Council Tax benefit may sound esoteric; what’s one more cut in a world of public sector austerity?

Yet most cuts to benefits are relatively simple to administer: you still give people money, just less of it.

Council Tax is rather different, as it involves taking money from people. Cutting Council Tax benefit means that you need to collect even more money from them. 

There is already a high level of non-payment of this levy and some local authorities are worried that the problem will only get worse when the cut comes into force.

In a nutshell, the government is not only cutting the benefit by 10 per cent but also shifting responsibility to councils. But ministers have made it much harder for local authorities to carry out the cut as they have ordered them to exempt pensioners and “vulnerable groups”, thought to include the disabled and families with children.

That means that out of 5m people who receive the benefit, only an estimated 1.3m may have to take the impact of the cut – implying they could be hit with a reduction of almost a third. That would mean an average of £330 per person, equivalent to the average household’s electricity bill over a nine-month period.

The public response from local government is still muted but some councils have already cottoned on to the possible implications. It’s not an exaggeration to say that there could be a repeat of the uproar which followed the poll tax two decades ago.

Some councils have been lobbying the government to be allowed to cut other exemptions, for example the 50 per cent discount which single people get on their Council Tax. But ministers have held firm; the single discount is enjoyed by millions of elderly people.

And so the brunt looks most likely to fall on low-income workers and the unemployed when the changes take effect in 2013. As a document from Tory-controlled Taunton Deane council says: “In the end we will have to decide, from a limited number of claims, which vulnerable group we support the least.”

READ WHAT: ERIC PICKLES ‘SECRETARY OF STATE’ SAYS ABOUT OVER-CHARGED COUNCIL TAX.

Are you paying too much Council Tax- check here?