MANY HAVE said that the worst is yet to come and they may be right as Thurrock Council’s ruling Labour cabinet are set to discuss how to deal with the scrapping of council tax benefit.
The agenda item is tucked away at Item 12 at the meeting in the civic offices on Wednesday but whatever is recommended and finally approved by the council could have massive consequences for the borough.
Council Tax Benefit is being scrapped and replaced with a local system of benefit.
At the moment every £1 of council tax benefit local authorities award is subsidised by £1 from the Government so there is no cost to the local authority.
Thurrock is likely to have a 15% shortfall (£1.1 milion) between the benefit paid and funding from the Government.
This means Thurrock is going to have to cut the benefit it pays by £1.1 milion – the cuts wont be spread across everyone claiming – only certain claimants wil have their benefit cut (mostly those working on a low income).
It appears that the government are cutting funding and making councillors decide which residents are losing out and having to pay more council tax.
It could be interpreted that if councillors refuse to create their own scheme the government will impose one on the local authority.
The cabinet meet at 7pm at the Civic Offices, New Road, Grays.
Presumably they don’t have to cut the benefit – they could increase council tax to cover the “shortfall”? Or make savings elsewhere in the budget?
Thurrock Council has opted for a zero percent Council Tax rise. To achieve this they receive a multi million pound subsidy from the Government. If they increase Council Tax the council will lose £ millions in subsidy.
Yes Thurrock Council could cut other services to plug the £1.1 million shortfall or raid the reserves but what services would you cut Ben? And what happens the year after? Cut more services take more monry from the reserves?
No local authority can sustain plugging the shortfall, there are only so many services they can cut and there are only so much reserves to spend.
Local Authorities have no choice but to cut the benefit they give certain residents meaning some of the poorest will end up paying more council tax thanks to these Coalition Government changes.
Ben what would the local Conservatives do? I assume the Conservative opposition at Thurrock have alternative proposals?
Ed: If the local tories have any sense at all, they will do as the labour group did for all the years they were in opposition and keep quiet, I think the biggest difference is the fact that labour are in control and they still dont have a clue what to do.It looks like they will have to make a decision that might displease some of their special voters, and cannot blame it on the government as its their decision, as Ben quite rightly pointed out it is their decision whether they cut benefits or raise taxes!!!!!
chickenfeed1 – you are correct that the Labour Cabinet will ultimately have to make the decision but the cuts are being imposed via Central Government and it is Central Government who instruct local authorities which claimants are protected and which claimants are to have their benefit cut.
£1.1 million isn’t an insignificant sum and their will be many thousands of households in Thurrock whose Council Tax bill will jump up becasue of these centrally imposed changes.
How many households will suffer and how much theirs bills will increase will no doubt be revealed once the Labour Cabinet decide what sort of scheme they will adopt for Thurrock later in the year.
Ed, the council could raise the council tax enough to cover the lost subsidy and this shortfall if they felt it was for the best. It does not enivtably follow that “some of the poorest will end up paying more council tax thanks to these Coalition Government changes.”
Also, who said anything about “cutting services” (hint – it wasn’t me)? There are almost certainly savings that can be made from the budget that do not equate to cutting services, and these are potentially annual savings (e.g. reduced headcount).
On your final point, I have no doubt we will hear more from the Conservatives about whether they support the proposals or whether they have an alternative proposal – once we’ve actually heard Labour’s proposals!
Local authorities are too large and overspend almost every year. There is no denying that changes need to occur in order to stop councils overspending by such dramatic amounts year on year. Labour authorities seem to be the most guilty culprits of overspending. As Ben has mentioned, they could raise the council tax to cover this shortfall, which admittedly would prove an election loser, or they could re-evaluate where money is going and have tighter controls on spending for each department. You cannot have a system whereby the government are subsidising everything and anything. At some point LAs must be able to run themselves financially.
Another thing they could do is moniter who they are giving benefits to in the first place considering the amount of stories that Your Thurrock and other local media sources have published about fraud in the borough. If someone is guilty of taking money from the council when they should not have been, all their assets should be seized and the money from sales of property/goods should be given back to the council.
Oh No, people having to pay their way. Whatever next, working for a living. My god.
Novoice – Let’s hope you never find yourself unemployed or disabled and being plunged further into poverty by having your benefits cut.
In a perfect world there would be lots of high paid jobs out there for everyone to free themselves from claiming benefit – but we are in a double dip recession – we have firms closing, others sacking staff or reducing the hours and overtime – forcing many to claim help towards their rent and council tax from their local authorities.
The flipside to that Ed is that we have millions sitting on generous handouts from the Government who have never worked a day yet they seem to get all the help, not those who have fallen on hard times.
Bernard these cuts will hit those who have fallen on hard time equally with those who sit on their backsides.
I believe the new Council Tax Benefit scheme will have to be voted on by all Councillors later in the year and then we will know who will be paying more council tax next year.
If Thurrock Council does nothing I believe the current benefit scheme will continue but with the loss of £1.1 million of subsidy resulting in a 2% rise in council tax to plug the hole, savings or cuts to other services to the tune of £1.1 million or a raid on the reserves.
Whether you like it or not Ed it was the Labour party that ruined the living standards of the vast majority of low paid and, in some cases, not so low paid people by flooding the country with cheap Labour and by introducing a system of taxpayer subsidised low paid employment. Unemployment in this country would be nowhere near what it is now had Labour not flooded the country with immigrants, large numbers of whom will be helping themselves to the very benefits you wish to continue paying them. I’ve said many times before, if Labour voters are happy to pay for these benefits out of their own taxes then they are free to do so. I for one don’t want to subsidise immigrants lives and I don’t want to subsidise the lives of those that choose not to work. Benefits were meant to be a safety net not a way of life. While taxpayers line the pockets of the workshy, Immigrants and greedy businesses that want to pay poverty wages in the knowledge that those carrying out those jobs are happy to do so because they get their taxpayer subsidies, the flood of immigrants will not end. Youth unemployment will not end and the benefit culture will not end. And this country will never recover from the Labour created, imported poverty we now see in this country. Read the story again. Low paid working people are the most likely to be affected and as we’re always told by the Labour party, the immigrants do the low paid work the feckless, workshy english won’t do. What a shame they’ll lose their benefits. I’ll cry the whole 12 hours I spend every day working and travelling to and from work at that thought. Boo hoo.
Novoice – I hope you never lose your job or become disabled or suffer from a debilitating illness and find yourself struggling to survive on reducing benefits.
Ed you are grouping different groups of people together and have not fully understood the point that NoVoice is making.
Naturally if someone is disabled, sick or out of work due to redundency etc then these are the types of people that we should be helping, These are the types of people that the Labour party set up benefits for in the 40s. These are the people who should recieve all the help the government/local councils can give to ensure that they can still have a relatively good quality of life. However Labour spent a decade increasing the workforce of this country through high immigration, which I’m sure had nothing to do with importing voters. This has led to a drop in the working wage which they plugged the gap with taxpayer subsidised benefits which can no longer continue as NoVoice argues.
I do not understand how someone who has not worked for years because they do not want to should get subsided council tax, prescriptions, childcare etc. This country post year 2000 rewards people for doing nothing while making things more expensive for the rest of us. It’s an upside down system which has to change.
Ed read the story again. Also it will be up to the council to decide who will be affected by any cuts. In my opinion it should be those that have not contributed a penny to this country in their life. Unfortunately Ed people like myself are not even considered for benefits even if hard times do affect me.
Recently I had to close a business that had an effect on members of my family as well as me. Because I was classed as being self employed fopr the last ten years and because my wife worked I was basically told to p*ss off by the benefits office when I asked if I could claim anything. Even though I had paid well over £100,000 in direct taxation in those ten years and probably paid over a quarter of a million pounds in direct taxation in my working life. I am entitled to nothing While an immigrant with a couple of kids can claim up to £26,000 a year, and previously it was unlimited, and they have contributed nothing to this country. The same goes for those that sit on their ar*e and do nothing regardless of where they come from. An immigrant that works full time and has a couple of kids can get up to £14,000 a year in benefits and that excludes childcare. Is that fair Ed. You feel so sorry for them you pay for them. It took me 5 months to find a job but I found one that pays me enough so that I don’t need to claim benefits. With close to 3 million EU citizens living and working in the UK, forget the vast vast majority of non european immigrants, imagine how much of taxpayers money is flowing out the door every single day.