The Isle of Wight’s Cabinet will this week consider its Council Tax Support (CTS) scheme amid “very significant” financial challenges.
Councillor Phil Jordan and his seven appointed representatives will look at whether to adopt a 2025/26 CTS plan proposed by deputy leader and cabinet member for housing and finance Ian Stephens and Chris Ward, the council’s director of finance.
The Cabinet will review a proposed scheme for 2025/26 which generally represents continuity apart from a “few small changes”.
Explaining the 2025/26 plan, Cllr Stephens’s report notes:
“Keeping this consistency will assist in alleviating poverty for those residents in the short-term, as no reduction in support would be implemented.
“Also, it would benefit those claimants in work in the short-term, with the proposed changes to earnings disregard and childcare costs.”
Adjustments include: removing childcare costs and disregarding the childcare part of Universal Credit from CTS, disregarding in full Post Office Compensation Scheme payments, disregarding in full Vaccine Damage Payments and disregarding in full any payments from the Infected Blood Inquiry.
The council has carried out a consultation on proposed changes, with 161 residents responding.
Most of those who took part agreed with the proposed plan for 2025/26.
CTS was introduced by the UK government as a replacement for the national Council Tax Benefit scheme which was abolished in 2013.
The benefit scheme allowed people on very low incomes to have 100 per cent of their council tax bills subsidised, according to the cabinet report for next week’s meeting.
Current CTS is divided into two parts: a plan for working age claimants and people of pension age, the latter being subject to regulations set by the government.
CTS appears as a discount on council tax bills rather than being a grant claimants receive.
In 2013, the council largely continued the previous benefit scheme’s framework for granting support.
Since then, a few changes have been made to the working-age plan as a result of reduced funding.
The council set up a CTS exceptional hardship fund in 2016/17 for some low-income households and changes were made to its local CTS plan by Full Council during the same year.
In February 2024, Full Council agreed to bolster the maximum level of CTS support from 70 to 75 per cent for those claiming it of a working age.
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