Council Tax Support scheme consultation

Introduction

Since 2013, Test Valley Borough Council has been required to publish a Local Council Tax Reduction scheme for working age residents on a low income. This replaced national council tax benefit. Until now, our scheme has broadly mirrored the rules of the old council tax benefit which can be difficult for residents to understand and result in frequent changes to council tax bills.

We are consulting on changes to our scheme aimed at making the process simpler to understand for residents and allow them to budget for payment of their council tax more effectively.

The proposed scheme is a banded scheme which mirrors Universal Credit in the income and capital rules where possible. Universal Credit is now the predominant working age benefit for customer in and out of work.

Other options for simplifying the CTS scheme were considered by officers and members. This included a single annual assessment of entitlement, or other set review periods. It was felt that this would not be suitable as there is a significant risk of residents receiving less support than they would have previously been entitled to and this could result in financial hardship. A scheme similar to Tax Credits where entitlement is based on the previous year’s income was considered however it was similarly felt that there was a great risk of claimants experiencing financial hardship should there be a change in their circumstances from the previous year.

There is an option within the consultation form for you to provide any other options you feel we may not have considered.

The views of residents and other stakeholders who have an interest in the administration of our scheme are important to Test Valley Borough Council.

The consultation closed on 27 October 2024

Once the results have been collated, these will be published.

The proposed scheme is summarised in this article, but you can also download the full draft scheme here. (pdf, 1.2mb)

Last Updated: 28 October 2024