What's New In Benefits?

Council Tax Support

Council Tax Benefit is the most commonly claimed benefit in the UK. Each year in Hyndburn we pay a total of £8.12m Council Tax Benefit to 9,600 households and currently you can claim up to 100% of your Council Tax bill. This is about to change and all Council Tax Benefit will be replaced by Council Tax Support in April 2013.

Like all councils we now have to introduce our own local scheme for payment of Council Tax Support. This means that we have to decide new rules about who can claim Council Tax Support and the amount of Council Tax Support they will receive. The funding we will get from Government to pay Council Tax Support will be 10% lower than the funding we get now to pay Council Tax Benefit. We will have £812k less available to us to pay Council Tax Support and we have to make some difficult decisions about who will get financial support and how much.

As well as providing Council Tax Support for less, the Government has set out that our scheme must incentivise work and reduce benefit dependency. Money saved by reducing Council Tax Support spending will go towards reducing the national deficit.

Our new local scheme for paying Council Tax Support will continue to help working age customers on low incomes but the Council Tax Support you will receive from April 2013 will be less than previous Council Tax Benefit awards and many people will have to pay Council Tax for the first time.

The new Council Tax Support scheme will not be applied to pension age customers who will continue to have up to 100% of their Council Tax paid.

Hyndburn's Council Tax Support Scheme will take effect on 1 April 2013 and affected residents will receive an up to date Council Tax Bill from mid-March 2013.

Full details of our scheme can be found on these pages.

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