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Major Council Tax Support problems with Universal Credit
There’s been a flurry of media attention in the last week looking at growing arrears of council tax and the hundreds of thousands being taken to court.
The situation will become much worse under Universal Credit unless DCLG change the rules.
You can see the detailed reasons, with some examples, on my blog at http://blog.cix.co.uk/gmorgan
Yes - the effect you’ve noted goes for much of England (default scheme), Wales and will also apply in Scotland (now that the Scotland Scheme is coming into line with E+W in this respect).
Around 40% of billing authorities in England have modified the default scheme approach and have added back in the standard earnings disregards - this will go some way towards mitigating this effect.
(I suspect that this modification might have happened by accident rather than by design.)
Conversely, in those LAs with higher CTR income tapers (most notably Tameside), the downside you’ve observed is magnified. It’s also magnified in cases with eligible childcare costs.
I get the impression that there is some awareness of this as an issue amongst LA scheme designers and I suspect that year-2 of CTR will see a few more local schemes moving away from pure-DS in this respect.
Unfortunately, my current understanding is that DCLG have effectively abandoned the default scheme - it’s not even clear if the DS will even be uprated for 2014/15 - so I doubt they’ll be willing to start prescribing in this area although it could of course be useful if they did.
There are plenty of other potential problems with the UC/CTR interface - dataflows / notifications / timing of revisions / weekly-paid workers etc,etc.
There are plenty of other potential problems with the UC/CTR interface - dataflows / notifications / timing of revisions / weekly-paid workers etc,etc.
I see your understatement is coming on well Jon.
I simply cannot understand why Council’s up and down the land will not give Clients nil CTR. I know many Council’s in the South East have flatly refused, but the regs and legislation are so weak in this area.
When you say nil CTR due you actually mean full CTR?
If not please ignore this posting, but if you did; the reason at my Council was that in all the consultation we did with the public, voluntary agencies, housing associations, social workers etc. there was a strongly held view that everybody should pay something towards their Council Tax.
It is difficult for a Council to consult widely and then ignore the only consistent message that comes back from that consultation.
I am not sure that those councils who chose to charge did a proper risk assessment to identify those who could afford to pay, those who could not afford to pay and those who will choose not to pay and then offset the risks against the full cost of recovery.
the reason at my Council was that in all the consultation we did with the public, voluntary agencies, housing associations, social workers etc. there was a strongly held view that everybody should pay something towards their Council Tax.
Presumably they did not get their wish, because no one on PC is contributing?
Indeed not, although we were already aware of that so the consultation was about the impact on working age people.
I shopuld perhaps also say that our consultation was before CAB decided the national position on CTR cuts so the CAB representatives only gave their personal opinions not that of the CAB.
Jeff