Tag Archives: benefits

Benefit schemes to be cut back next year

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Copied from LGC online
14 March 2013 | By Ruth Keeling

Many people on low incomes will see big jumps in their council tax bills when the government stops funding schemes to cushion them from the removal of benefit, research seen by LGC reveals.

Almost 20% of the 195 billing authorities receiving a share of the £100m pot intend to switch to less generous support regimes in 2014-15 or review the more generous ones that transition cash helps fund, according to National Policy Institute figures.

This comes after the government announced one year of funding for schemes that aim to limit the council tax liability of claimants who previously received a 100% discount on bills to just 8.5%.

The funding, revealed in October, led many councils to change their original plans.

Sabrina Bushe, a researcher at the NPI who is compiling the figures, said they provided an early indication of what authorities would do next year.

“Many councils will simply revert back to the – sometimes quite harsh – schemes that they had initially consulted on,” she said.

The NPI figures show that 13 of the 195 councils will switch back to less generous discount schemes in 2014-15, while 23 will put this year’s regime under review.

Sevenoaks DC, one of the authorities reverting to a less generous discount regime, will expect claimants to pay a minimum of 18.5% of the total tax. Council leader Peter Fleming (Con) said that the 18.5% figure reflected the size of the funding cut applied to Sevenoaks.

The council was unable to use other budgets to plug the financial gap once transition funding ran out, he said. “We are making far more than 10% savings in all our other budgets,” he said.

Referring to the need for councils to fund support schemes, he said: “They have handed us something extra and are not fully funding it.”

Another authority reverting to a less generous scheme is Newcastle City Council, according to NPI’s research. Its proposed scheme for 2014-15 will include a minimum contribution of 20%.

City treasurer Paul Woods said the council would revert to the regime it proposed before ministers announced the transition funding for 2012-13. “As we have already fully consulted on this, further consultation is doubtful and would not be good value for money,” he said.

However, Mr Woods suggested the government could combine the £50m it underspent on the transition funding with any leftover council tax freeze grant to provide a second year of transition funding. “This would give greater certainty and stability while the new arrangements bed in,” he said.

A spokesman for the Department for Communities & Local Government said the grant was to help councils deliver long-term savings.

“The expectation is local authorities will be taking all possible steps to help families with their cost of living, keeping down pressure on council tax bills by sharing services and back-office functions, cutting wasteful expenditure, and smarter procurement,” he said.

“We will consider whether further action is required in due course.”

Full list of councils

Court to rule on council tax support schemes

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Copied from LGC online
4 February, 2013 | By Mark Smulian

One has to ask if this ‘Knight In Shining Dog Collar’, isn’t picking a fight with the wrong level of government? Local government is being forced in to this position by central government. Based on the principle that everybody must pay something, government has placed the onerous task of deciding how to divvy up the council tax support budget, whilst cutting that budget by 10%.

This legal action is simply going to give the council involved an even larger hole in their budgets, unless they are able to claim back their costs from the other party. One has to ask if the complainants will put the same amount of effort in to helping these councils determine where to find the money required to fill the financial shortfall that loosing this case would create.

Two local authorities will be forced to defend their council tax support schemes in the High Court this week in the first of a string of legal-aid funded challenges by law firm Irwin Mitchell.

The first case against Haringey LBC is due to heard on Tuesday with a challenge to Sheffield City Council’s scheme due to begin on Friday. Irwin Mitchell say it has cases against Birmingham City Council, Hackney LBC and Rochdale MBC in the pipeline and warned it was “investigating several further councils”.

Sheffield cabinet member for finance and resources Bryan Lodge (Lab) said: “We will defend any proceedings because we simply have no choice but to make changes to our benefits system when we have had to make a cumulative savings of £180m over three years”.

A Haringey spokesperson said: “We took on board the views of residents, which is why those households that include claimants in receipt of certain benefits recognising significant disability have been shielded from the change.”

The string of legal challenges appear to have been initiated by Haringey residents who were put in contact with Irwin Mitchell lawyers by Paul Nicolson, a vicar who chairs the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust anti-poverty charity and Taxpayers Against Poverty, a campaigning organisation he founded last year.

He said: “I remember the poll tax in the 1990s and this is going to be worse. Taken with changes in unemployment benefits and housing benefit there will be a devastating affect on many people.”

Rev Nicolson said ministers had left local authorities too little time to devise acceptable support schemes, as defining financial hardship “requires detailed thought and there was just not enough time allowed for council to do this”.

Council tax support will be localised in April, when councils can set their own rules on who receives it but with a 10% cut in the overall budget.

Many claimants face being asked to pay council tax for the first time.

Local authorities can claim transitional relief if they limit increases for those who previously paid nothing to 8.5% of the tax level, but this is only available for one year.

A Birmingham City Council spokesperson said: “The council believes that the scheme is fair and lawful and will strongly defend any legal proceedings.”

He added that Birmingham thought its schemes differed sufficiently from others that “a finding against another authority would be binding on Birmingham”.

It rejected transitional relief because it would only defer the support scheme for a year and that “may not truly promote positive work incentives or support people back into work”.

Peers champion ‘graph of doom’ prediction in Lords debate

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Copied from Local Government Chronicle
3 December, 2012 | By Keith Cooper

The government’s effort to discredit local government predictions of a looming social care funding crisis have failed to convince Labour and Liberal Democrat members of the House of Lords.

Peers debating the future of social care in the upper chamber this week pointed repeatedly to the now-famous “Barnet Graph of Doom” which shows that council budgets could soon be eaten up entirely by an inexorable increase in adult social care.

Senior civil servants dispatched to the Communities and Local Government had this month dismissed this prediction as overly ‘apocalyptic’ and too ‘pessimistic’.

But Baroness Barker (Lib Dem) told peers it was “understandable that people talk in apocalyptic terms about social care”.

“The Barnet graph of doom says it all. I have to say that the LGA laid it on by doing exactly what I would have done in the circumstances, which is to pick the very worst case.”

Lord Lipsey (Lab) also pointed to the north London borough’s graphic portrayal of the alleged impending social care crisis. “[The Barnet Graph of Doom] shows what the council expects to spend on services and, on another line, what it expects to be allowed to spend in total.

“By 2030, spending on social services alone, the bulk of that on old people, exceeds the total budget,” he added. “Either no bins will be emptied in Barnet…there will be no libraries or parks- no town hall even- or there will be further big cuts for old people.”

Lord Warner (Lab), a member of the Dilnot commission, agreed with Lord Lipsey’s characterisation of social care funding. “This will mean that big cities in particular lose their civic services around arts, leisure, and other things which make for a civilised society as their authorities concentrate on social care and child protection.”

Earle Howe (Con), parlimentary under-secretary of state Department of Health, challenged the “story of cuts” portrayed by his fellow peers.

“We remain firmly of the view that the funding we have provided is enough to allow authorities to maintain access to services and to provide good-quality care. Independent research from the King’s Fund corroborates this.”

“This is not the story of cuts as some critics have made out, and there is only limited evidence of the impact on services or on users.”

Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab) and vice president of Carers UK, who opened the debat sais she found it hard to recognise “the picture of local services” painted by Lord Howe.