Yesterday Somerset Council Executive members agreed to recommend changes to a Council Tax Reduction scheme. This will help pension-age and working-age people across Somerset on the lowest incomes. The Executive agreed to ensure the income bands for the Council Tax Reduction scheme are uprated in line with inflation.
Somerset Council is required by law to fund and implement a Council Tax Reduction scheme for those of pension-age. However there is no such requirement for the Council to support working-age people on low incomes.
It was also recommended that Somerset Council continue with the Exceptional Hardship scheme next year. This provides additional financial assistance to those in the greatest need.
Both recommendations will go before full council before Christmas (on 20 December).
The council is in financial dire straits and struggling to avoid a s114 notice (bankruptcy). However both Leader Bill Revans, and Deputy Leader Liz Leyshon saw no need to make the poorest suffer.
Cllr Revans stressed that what Somerset Council needed was a fair settlement from central government. Cllr Leyshon, noted: “Earlier this year, we introduced a Council Tax Reduction scheme covering the whole Somerset Council area. For the first time ever, this offered reductions of up to 100% for those on the lowest incomes right across Somerset. The recent recommendation to uprate the income bands in line with inflation indicates that we are working towards continuing that policy in the next financial year.”
Meanwhile the council has yet to say what it is doing to bring in the £42m of uncollected council tax inherited from the four district councils in April this year.
This is a very good decision by the council.
All we have seem to read about is the cuts that need to be made due to central governments lack of funding of the local council and due to Old team, the counc touch base, other words the budget it says itself to collecting council taxes, having remained frozen for six years while inflation gallops away,. This was also another conservative decision which puddle the council been able to increase its revenue to pay for the ever increasing services.
of course government finance was supposed to have been overhold each year and I speak as somebody who used to work there the government making any long-term decisions so now we are stuffed.
Council up and down. The land of all cars are in massive financial problem, but the end of the day these are all decisions that we are the public have made politically, did we want the government that invested in good services and made sure it was local council, tax provision or not. Something is eventually going to have to. We cannot have Scandinavian style services with an American tax system
We do not have an American Tax system. In fact we pay more tax than the Scandinavian’s do. The difference is how well our tax money is spent and in the case of the new Somerset Authority it is badly spent overall.