Tag Archives: lord richard best

Stephen Tall

Government suffers defeat in Lords over ‘new poll tax’ changes to council tax benefits

By Stephen Tall | Mon 22nd October 2012 - 7:25 pm

The Government has suffered a defeat today on changes to the system of paying council tax benefit. As part of the Coalition’s existing welfare cuts, council tax relief is being reduced and local authorities are being given the power to set their own eligibility criteria from April 2013. As the Financial Times reported last week:

The coalition has earmarked £100m for councils that promise to limit the sums poorer people must pay to around 8.5 per cent of the full council tax rate – less than half what some local authorities are considering. … Lord Best, president of the Local Government Association, will on Tuesday propose an amendment

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 8 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Dan Falchikov
    Well said: "David Howarth’s Being Liberal explores the Liberal disposition: open-minded, suspicious of abuses of power, uncomfortable with hierarchy, treatin...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    This is the clearest statement of the case I have read in a while, and "competence is not a destination" is the line worth repeating. One worked example from ...
  • Simon McGrath
    @jennie "“Liberals have always been suspicious of too much power in too few hands.” *looks at direction of travel of internal party mechanisms the last fiv...
  • Jack Nicholls
    Roz, I can't think of anything you ever write that I don't heartily agree with, frequently in letter and always in spirit. We've started (literally just started...
  • Peter Dunphy
    The challenge of empowering local communities/councils etc is not that this will allow the house building or wind farms or railway lines that we need - they wil...