Council Tax Support Scheme consultation 2025

Consultation closes: Wednesday, 7 January 2026
Consultation opened: Wednesday, 26 November 2025

We have considered all aspects of the scheme and how they could be changed. The following elements of the scheme have been considered when developing the consultation:  

Fully means tested

One option is to is to move away from an income-banded scheme and return to a fully means-tested scheme. However, this means the support individual claimants receive would change more frequently in response to changes in income, other benefits or family circumstances. This would revert back to a scheme that is more complex and costly for us to administer. It is also more complex for residents to understand and gives them less certainty about the level of support they will receive if there are small changes to their income.

Discount bands

We currently have 4. Most local authorities with an income-banded scheme have 4 bands.

Capital limits

Ours is £16,000 so we could reduce this, some other councils have reduced this to £6,000. Analysis of our current claimants showed that reducing the capital limit would have little impact on the cost of administering the scheme. Most of our claimants have very little savings.

Non-dependent deductions

Whilst these make the administration more complex, we could consider reintroducing them after having removed them in 2023/24. However, we no longer hold up to date details on non-dependents living in a household so we would have to contact all claimants receiving Council Tax support to find out who else is living in the household which would add additional complexity and cost to the scheme.

Disabled disregards

We don’t count some income for disabled claimants (referred to in the scheme as income disregard). Some councils don’t do this. If we stopped or reduced disregarding some income from our calculations for disabled people it would mean the scheme would cost less to administer but disabled claimants would have to pay more. We know that people with disabilities are disproportionately affected by the rising cost of living, increased energy and food costs, and higher essential costs like heating and equipment needed to manage their condition.