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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Housing costs  →  Thread

LCTR scheme - award assessed by broad UC income bands = worse off

Peter Turville
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Welfare rights worker - Oxford Community Work Agency

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Oxford City council has amened their LCTR scheme for 18-19 for UC claimants (because of the problems obtaining details of UC awards from DWP).

For UC claimants entitlement is based on broad UC income bands (similar to NDDs under HB) rather than using conventional applicable amounts against income with disregards etc. Under the banding they can get 100/75/50/25% reduction of their liability

Has any other LA introduced a similar scheme or is it unique to Oxford?

Under the previous scheme UC claimants (like those on relevant legacy benefits) were ‘passported’ to max LCTR. Oxford City were providing 100% LCTR (and still are for legacy benefit passported claimants in 18-19). 

However many UC claimants who were previously entitled to max LCTR will not be eligible for 100% discount under the income banding. Crudely only single claimants / childless couples (aged 25+) without any UC elements will get 100%. Claimants with a child, certain UC elements (e.g. LCFWRA) can only get a max of 75% because their ‘UC income’ exceeds the income band that provides 100%. For a band C property will mean a liabilty of £280 p.a. (with 75% discount)

Although the council say this new scheme is not intended to save money clearly this will make an increasing number of claimants ‘worse off’ compared to legacy beenfits as UC ‘rolls out’.

Gareth - have you done any modelling for this type of scheme?

[ Edited: 19 Apr 2018 at 09:47 am by Peter Turville ]
Gareth Morgan
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CEO, Ferret, Cardiff

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I haven’t.  At the moment I’m under a lot of time pressure doing a DHSC review that has to feed into the Social Care Green Paper, which has to be out before the Summer Recess.  After that I might have some time to pull together the modelling that I’ve been working on to compare the range of CTR schemes around GB.

Peter Turville
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Welfare rights worker - Oxford Community Work Agency

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Total Posts: 1659

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I understand - #it all makes work ....

Gareth Morgan
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CEO, Ferret, Cardiff

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Peter, I should have said that there are similar schemes in Bath/NE Somerset and in West Somerset which are included in our benefit calculators.  I assume that yours is as well.