South Tyneside Council’s Cabinet to consider Council Tax support system

The current complex system is administered to over 10,000 working age people and is reviewed annually.

Due to this, South Tyneside Council is looking to start an eight-week consultation period on changes to the scheme to bring it in line with their ambition to target support to make things fairer.

Cllr Joanne Bell, Lead member for Governance, Finance and Corporate Services, has explained why the local authority feels there needs to be a consultation.

She said: “This is about making a fairer and more transparent council tax support system that is easier to both understand and administer.

“We are committed to targeting support to make things fairer and the changes will still help over 10,000 working age people in South Tyneside who need help with their council tax bills due to their personal circumstances.

“Entitlement under the current scheme is determined through the award of personal allowance, premiums, and tapers.

“The rules of the current scheme can be difficult for customers to understand how changes in income, capital and household circumstances affect their benefit entitlement.

“The proposal is to move to a banded scheme that is easier to understand. Customers will fall into one of five groups based upon income levels and the amount of support that they will be awarded will be clearly linked to each group.

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“We want to know what customers think of the proposed scheme and, if approved by Cabinet, a consultation exercise will run from July until September.”

Under the proposed new scheme, customer entitlement will be determined by the group linked to their net income and household circumstance.

It means that amount of support paid will only change if their new net income or household circumstances results in them moving into a different group.

A set percentage reduction will apply to those customers in receipt of a passported benefit and on the lowest incomes.

South Tyneside Council says it will continue to disregard the incomes currently disregarded in the current scheme such as Disability Living Allowance or Personal Independence Payments.

Other key features of the Council’s proposed new scheme include:

• Capital under £16k will be ignored.
• Non dependant deductions will be removed which will result in higher awards.
• Council Tax Support can be backdated up to 12 months, previously 1 month.
• Changes will be applied from the effective date instead of the Monday following.

South Tyneside Council’s Cabinet will make a decision on launching a consultation on Wednesday, July 12, and if approved, the consultation on the proposals will open on Monday, July 17, and run until September 11.

The consultation questionnaire will be available on the council’s website at www.southtyneside.gov.uk/haveyoursay.

Hard copies of the consultation will also be available at South Shields Town Hall, Jarrow Town Hall, The Word, Hebburn Central, Jarrow Focus and Cleadon Park Library.

The Council has stated that presentations on the proposals will be made at the meetings of each Community Area Forum during the consultation period.