Council Tax Support Scheme 2025/26 Consultation

Overview

What is this consultation about?  

Council Tax Support (CTS) is a benefit that helps people to pay their Council Tax bill. By law, the council must review each year how much it spends on Council Tax Support.

The council is considering changing the amount of CTS that some people get towards their bill. We want your views on the proposed changes and any impact they would have on your household.

We want to ensure the scheme continues to be viable and affordable in future.

We're proposing some new criteria for awarding CTS and want to understand how these would affect different people. If these changes were made in their entirety, the council would save £1.739 million in 2025/26.

Why are we doing this? 

We've seen a large increase in the amount of money we spend on this support. Next year we are predicting to spend more than £12 million on CTS if we don't implement the changes and our general expectation is that it will continue to grow.

The Council remains under the intervention of the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government due to it having failed to meet its best value duty or demonstrate that it can become sustainable and resilient without exceptional financial support.  This requires the Council to live within its means and consider ways of driving down costs.  The Council currently have the most beneficial CTS scheme within Berkshire and its scheme is more generous than many other councils in the local area and statistical neighbours.  With the financial pressures to close the budget gap, the Council must look at all options, including reducing support provided under the CTS scheme.

It's a legal requirement that the council lives within its means and offers services it knows it can afford in the long term. Other councils are facing the same challenge and a number of them are also looking at how much they spend on CTS. Taking no action could put the council in financial difficulty and affect its ability to provide services.

Reductions to CTS are being looked at together with other ways the council can save money.

We want to make sure that CTS continues to be available to support our most vulnerable residents now and in the future.

If these changes are implemented, we're proposing to provide a fund offering one-off support for those most affected.

What are the proposed changes? 

The proposed CTS scheme for 2025/26 reduces all the current percentage reductions across all the Income Bands.

The table below shows the current and proposed bands:

If we were to implement the new Bands we would reduce gross CTS expenditure by £2.306m each year. The table below shows the reduction of scheme expenditure:

In addition, we are proposing:

• That where a customer has made a claim for Universal Credit and we are notified by the DWP, Council Tax Support can be awarded without the need for a separate application being completed, and
• Backdating will be extended from 1-month to 3-months if good cause for failing to apply sooner can be shown, and anytime back to the beginning of the financial year in exceptional circumstances.

What options have we considered? 

We have thought about other options. These have not been completely rejected and you are asked about them in the questionnaire, but, at the moment we do not think we should implement them for the reasons given. 

We have modelled several proposed scheme options, and these are shown in the table below:

We have considered:  

Option 1 – do not propose amendments to the current CTS scheme.

The Council’s financial situation and the fact it has a scheme which is more beneficial than many other local authorities, including all the other Berkshire authorities, means this is not recommended.

Option 2 – consult on proposed amendments that offer a lower level of savings.

The Council has benchmarked itself against other local authorities.  Two other authorities in Berkshire already have a CTS scheme with a maximum discount of 70% despite having higher rates of Council Tax.  The Council has modelled several alternative schemes all of which deliver a lower level of savings. This is not recommended.

Option 3 – consult on proposed amendments that offer a higher level of savings. 

The Council could consider further reductions in support; however, this is likely to impact on the collection rate and lead to increased levels of enforcement and write off of uncollectable debt.  This is not recommended.

Option 4 – make savings from other service areas or utilise reserves. 

The Council is already having to make significant savings from service areas.  It is already receiving exceptional financial support from MHCLG to balance its budget and even with this, it still has an estimated unfunded budget gap for 2025/26 which will require further difficult decisions around service priorities.  The Council does not have sufficient reserves to utilise to avoid making savings decisions.  This is not recommended.

Option 5 – consult on a new draft scheme. 

This provides an opportunity for the Council to seek views from taxpayers, service users and current applicants on the balance to be struck between support for taxpayers who are in financial need and support for service users and wider taxpayers and to identify the impact of the changes on particular groups and any mitigations that could be considered.  This option is recommended.

What mitigations have we considered?

It is recognised that this could be difficult for some households, so consideration is being given to potential mitigations for the most in need, including:

• A hardship fund of £175,000 to provide additional financial assistance to households who experience financial difficulty
• Look to utilise an element of tranche 7 of the Household Support Fund for 2025/26, and
• Provide welfare advice to assist households in managing their finances and ensuring that all benefits are being claimed.

What are the aims of the consultation?

• Inform the community and build awareness of the purpose and potential implications of proposed changes to Council Tax Support
• Undertake consultation on Council Tax Support that is meaningful, inclusive and transparent to understand the community's views on proposed changes to Council Tax Support
• Use that feedback to inform any appropriate changes to Council Tax Support from April 2025 onwards.

We will conduct this consultation according to the council's consultation standards and will feed back to the community to let them know that we have listened and acted on the information they provided.

Data Protection Statement

This consultation questionnaire and the information we collect will be used for the purposes of evidence-based decision making on Slough Borough Council’s future focus, approach and priorities. We are committed to the principles of the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK General Data Protection Regulations and by continuing to complete this consultation questionnaire you are consenting to us processing this data.

This will be used to make decisions in a public forum and the results will be published online and anonymous data may be accessed by third parties to validate the results of the consultation.

We will only retain the data collected for as long as is necessary and, after the period determined by our Data Protection Officer, this data will be destroyed in accordance with our IT and Information Security Procedures.

The council does not collect personal information in this survey which means the information you provide is anonymous. We do not ask for your name, address, email address, telephone number, full post code or any other information that would allow us to identify you. The information you choose to give us in the demographic questions is also anonymous so we cannot identify you from it. To help us keep this survey anonymous and protect your privacy, please do not include any personal information in the free text boxes. For example names, addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers or any other information that could identify you or others.

Please refer to our data privacy notice at https://www.slough.gov.uk/data-protection-foi/privacy-notices for further details on how we protect your privacy.

If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, please email DataProtectionOfficer@slough.gov.uk

Why your views matter

No decision has been made to make these changes – the results of this consultation will show us how different people would be affected. We will look very carefully at these results before making any decision.

Once the consultation period has ended the feedback will be collated and a public report presented at a meeting of the council’s Cabinet on 20 January 2025 for them to make a recommendation to full Council on 23 January 2025. If changes to the scheme are approved by the Council, the new scheme will then go live from the 1st April 2025.

We will write a report about the views we have collected, which includes this survey. If changes are implemented, we will show how they have shaped any changes. The report will be added to this page.

Related Surveys

During the months ahead, we will also be asking your views on some of the different proposals being put forward for related work for changing the way the council works and delivers services in the borough to become a more efficient organisation. These will be listed below when they are live. 

Related surveys and consultations: 

• Our Budget 2025-26