A Million Households Are Likely To Miss Out On £150 In Council Tax Rebates

New figures show that a million households could miss out on the £150 council tax rebate to help with the cost of living.

Ministers have been cautioned that those who don’t pay council tax through direct debit risk being left out in the cold if they forget to apply by the end of the month.

The Liberal Democrats submitted Freedom of Information requests to every regional authority in the country, of the 155 that replied, there were 3,530,831 people who don’t pay council tax via direct debit.

Of those, 1,077,378 eligible for the rebate hasn’t applied, equating to nearly one in three who pay through other ways such as cheques.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey told a newspaper outlet that this was a botched government scheme which will leave families and pensioners out in the cold and that it was evident from the beginning that payments were never going to reach some of those who need it most.

He said that now time was running out to protect people from catastrophic energy bills, and he said it would have been far easier to send money straight to people’s homes, now the only way to protect people is scrapping the energy price rise in October.

He said that we have a zombie Government refusing to act even when their own half-baked programmes are proved to be ineffective.

The Government announced the rebate in February for properties in bands A-D.

Families will also receive £400 discounts on energy bills in six instalments this winter.

Families will also receive £400 discounts on energy bills in six instalments this winter, but ministers are under pressure to go further as inflation hits a 40-year high of 10.1 per cent.

A government spokesman said they were encouraging councils to make payments without further delay and have given a host of options to do this quickly and securely, including bank account transfers, council tax account credits or a voucher-based system.

You can apparently get £150 back from the council to help pay your energy bills, which they have called a rebate, but you can only get the rebate if you pay council tax and your home is in council tax bands A and D.

You will only get the rebate if you’re the person who has to pay council tax for your household, and if you can’t get a rebate, the council might still be able to offer you financial support.

Wow, £150, that’s really going to balance the books for the year and transform the world.

If people don’t pay by Direct Debit then the council won’t have their bank details to pay them the £150, but saying that, it could always be credited to their accounts and thus knocked off their account the following year.

It was the easiest thing for councils to have done. All they had to do was subtract the rebate from the council tax bill instead of making it complicated filling in forms et cetera, although I guess that was the idea, to make it as difficult as possible so that some people would forget to claim, so there was more money to put into the council’s coffers.

And why is it just assumed that people whose council tax is E or higher don’t require any assistance? This is despicable because some people that live in social housing, particularly if they live in London have a higher tax band because of the location that they live in.

Again, this is the government assuming that because your home is in a high council tax band you don’t require help, and this is all just assumption by the government and we don’t need that because assumption is the mother of all goof ups.