Discretionary Council Tax Rebate should be targeted to people in actual need

[Eastie77Returns]

Received a letter from the council informing me I’ve been awarded some money under this scheme. The letter reads that the Authority believes that I’m at risk of suffering severe financial hardship due to the cost of living crisis hence the award. We are a family of 4, 2 working adults and 2 children with a household income above £100k.

I do not understand why central and local government are incapable of correctly targeting families that truly need help instead of this scatter gun approach of sending money to all and sundry. AIBU to think this is a complete waste of resources and means families that are really suffering severe hardship go without? The same goes for the £400 energy rebate. What is the justification for rolling this out all all households across country irrespective of income?!

A more targeted scheme with means testing would take a lot longer to design and roll out and there are plenty who can't wait. You'd inevitably miss people who need help too.

Plenty of higher earners can still have relatively precarious overall financial situations and may not be able to bear what could well be a once in a generation level of hit.

Can’t they just target people who have already been means tested and are receipt of Benefits? Probably overly simplistic. Just seems like a waste to apply the payments to everyone.

Higher earners who are in a precarious situation are usually in that situation because they’ve over stretched themselves. There is almost always room for manoeuvre to reduce outgoings.

I, ve been fighting to try and get this for my mum. she gets a state pension only and has to pay the full council tax of £125 it's a huge chunk of her pension. Got knocked back because 'she has too much income' the system is crazy because it's discretionary for each council.

Same with the covid support. 3 million workers were excluded and huge numbers of people who didn't need it were almost press-ganged into accepting.

Local council for one. I run a small business, able to continue operating as it was mostly online. I never gave a thought to claiming any of the support as I didn't "need" it as I was still earning, although at a lower rate. Local council pestered me to apply for "additional restrictions grants" - started with a couple of emails, then became phone calls almost every week. Basically telling me they had money and needed firms to apply so they could "use the budget".

What was more annoying was that at the same time, I had clients who'd been excluded, desperate for money, who HAD applied to the council for the ARG grants but rejected because they couldn't provide "evidence" such as a lease to "prove" they were in business! Council wouldn't accept lease documents and driving instructor membership certificates from a driving instructor client, they wouldn't accept bank statements showing stall rental payments to the council's own market, etc. Unless you were a business formally renting property, they wouldn't help you - which is nonsense because those with business premises already got the business rates based support grant.

There really must be better ways of paying for support. The current systems are inadequate - they were inadequate for covid and the're inadequate for cost of living crisis. Councils aren't competent enough to administer the support schemes.

Nail on the head. Councils are making their own rules up as to eligibility and have no formal appeals process. Central govt have no control and have given little guidance to councils. They're just throwing money at councils and abdicating responsibility by blaming councils when they get it wrong.

The system is bananas and allowing councils to make discretionary payments is clearly not working as intended.

I have no idea how our household was identified as one likely to “suffer financial hardship” given our income. We are obviously not in receipt FSM or any benefits. It all seems a bit random. We don’t need the money and yet so many people living here do (we are in an area with high levels of deprivation) but have not received this rebate.

Would you consider donating the amount to something like a food bank OP?

So looks like they have used your postcode then.

I’m in a deprived area with some of the most expensive housing in the country. There are extremely wealthy homeowners living in gentrified pockets of the borough. Sending money to all people who live here, on the basis of their postcode alone, is therefore another thing that doesn’t make sense.