Changes to council tax benefit approved

Doncaster Mayor Peter Davies

Published on 18/01/2013 11:04

Councillors have approved new changes to council tax benefit following plans by the government to replace the national system from April.

Mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies, said: “As the government have reduced their funding of council tax Benefits in Doncaster by 10 per cent we have had to make difficult decisions which impact on thousands of people. Although we have been forced to make some cuts, I am pleased that we are able to continue protecting pensioners and support our most vulnerable residents and those most at risk of financial hardship. We have retained the current system of full support for those on the lowest incomes such as Income Support and a full disregard of war pensions will continue under our local scheme instead of following the government scheme of only disregarding £10.”

While those on the lowest incomes will be protected, those with higher incomes who still receive some council tax benefit will be affected. Anyone with a higher income who receives council tax benefit will have to pay more towards their council tax than they currently do. People who are not protected and receive child benefit for more than one child may have to contribute extra to their council tax if they have a higher income.

Second home owners also face changes with full council tax charges being implemented on furnished properties and charges of an additional 50 per cent premium on properties that have remained empty and unfurnished for more than two years.

Leader of the Labour group, Cllr Glyn Jones, said: “The Tory-led Government continues to attack the hard working families of Doncaster. These are difficult decisions which have been forced on the council by savage Government cuts. Labour has done all it can to protect the most vulnerable people in our community so they are the least affected by the changes.”

News

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Changes to council tax benefit approved

Top stories

News

Business