Kingston has pledged that people on low incomes across the borough will continue to be protected from council tax increases as a result of the government abolishing Council Tax Benefit.

Council Tax Benefit – the system designed to help reduce council tax bills for low income households – will be abolished in April 2013. Instead, Kingston Council and other local authorities are losing funding and will have to spend money introducing a new scheme. Many councils are proposing charging hard-pressed people hundreds of pounds they did not previously have to pay.

Kingston Council, however, is set to agree a package of measures that will protect the borough’s vulnerable and low-income residents and ensure it meets its commitment to reduce child poverty. Pensioners will already be protected from any changes but the Council has ensured that disabled working age residents will also be protected from changes.

The Government recommended that councils limit any council tax rises for low-income households to 8.5 per cent at most, but even this would have meant that people living in a Band D property in Kingston would have to pay £140 extra a year.

The Government’s plans could have had a severe impact on some of our most vulnerable residents. It is simply unacceptable that those people least able to pay should be hit with a £140 hike in their council tax to pay for the Government’s plans.  The Government seems happy to see those on benefits have an increase of up to 8.5 per cent whilst at the same time restricting councils to a two per cent increase for those not on Council Tax benefits. This seems both unfair and inconsistent and would have been a hard pill to swallow for people on low incomes already facing tough changes to welfare benefits. Our priority is to protect those who can least afford to pay.  We will be deciding the level of council tax over the coming months and our aim is to restrict low income households generally to the same increase as everyone else.

says Cllr Rolson Davies, Lead Member for Finance and Resources