Nottingham City Council is proposing a savage attack on
Council Tax Benefits
·
Every working age person and their
partner would have to pay at least 20% of their Council Tax bill - with some
similarity to the poll tax, an unwaged person on their own would be paying 20%
of the bill
·
Council Tax Benefit would be based
on a maximum of a band B property. Therefore,
if one member of a couple worked and one did not and the working person
lost their job – they would pay:
·
If in a band B property, £251 per
year - £5 a week
·
If in a band D property £606.92 a
year – £11.67 per week – a massive 37% of their council tax
It gets worse
·
If people are able to save up for
retirement or lose their job and receive some
redundancy money, if a person and/or their partner has savings above
£6,000, they will not be entitled to any council Tax Benefit
·
And to add insult to injury- if a
claim is not in on time and there can be many reasons for that – no
backdating will be allowed!
·
The council is also
considering stopping CTB if the amount
due to a recipient is less than £2/week
or £4/week
·
These proposals mean that many
people will not be able to pay their council tax
·
Rather
than pass on Con-Dem cuts, Nottingham and all other councils should refuse to
pass government cuts on and should be building a massive campaign to fight for
properly funded councils. Nottingham City Council say
they lost a massive £60million in real terms in 2011/12. Councils like Nottingham should stop using
highly paid external consultants which costs £millions
If
the councils do not want to fight for fully funded schemes, we need to build a
massive community campaign involving the trade unions, many of whose members
are facing
these attacks.
