White Paper 'Designing local Council Tax Support schemes'

Designing local Council Tax Support schemes is an urgent task facing local authorities: in April 2013 Council Tax Benefit will be replaced by new localised support schemes, and at the same time spending will be cut by 10%.

To help local authorities develop policy Entitledto are today publishing a White Paper setting out the options available. To view the White Paper see Designing local Council Tax Support schemes.

The paper examines various options for local Council Tax Support schemes in the context of the reduction in central government grant. It concentrates in particular on the potential role for caps on the maximum Council Tax that can be claimed for. It also looks at various other ways of reducing expenditure, such as tightening the means test, changing income definitions, and removing entitlement from particular categories of claimant.

The paper is part of a series Entitledto are publishing on local Council Tax Support. Future papers will look in more detail at work incentives under alternative schemes and ways of modelling the effect of different schemes.

For more background on the government's proposals to localise support for Council Tax, and a breakdown of the impact on each local authority, please see the first paper in this series: August 2011 briefing on Council Tax Benefit reforms.

Entitledto is working with the IRRV to ensure that local authorities are ready and able to meet the challenge of designing and implementing local Council Tax Support schemes.