More help is a step closer for the Island’s most vulnerable residents as they could get extra money off their council tax bill.
At last week’s Isle of Wight Council cabinet meeting, it was agreed to recommend a further 5% increase to those in receipt of the council tax support scheme (LCTS).
It comes as the cost of living crisis increases and more and more families are feeling the squeeze.
Currently, those eligible for LCTS get up to 65% off their council tax bill but that could rise to 70% next year. When deciding whether to increase the support, officers say the council must have regard to its current financial pressures.
Speaking at the cabinet meeting, Councillor Chris Jarman said a year ago the Alliance Administration halted the decline in support but would, where possible, look to increase the level of relief in the future.
Cabinet unanimously supported the increase but only if the council can afford it as it would cost the authority £359,821 to implement. The final decision on how much support people will receive will be made in January, ahead of the budget-setting meeting in February.
The exceptional hardship fund is also available to residents in receipt of the LCTS, who are in suffering hardship to receive extra assistance in paying their council tax.
Currently, those eligible for LCTS get up to 65% off their council tax bill but that could rise to 70% next year.
free rent/less council tax, free dental/free prescriptions, child tax credits/energy payments, more and more freebies, subsidies and yet they are still classed as vulnerable.
no council – the real vulnerable people now are those that actually work and pay taxes.
if you can afford to give away more money to benefit claimants, then you can afford to cut the council tax for those that actually pay it in full
Well said a large percentage of people think they are entitled to sit on their butts subsidised
by those that really need support.
Good idea. But second home owners should be except, and their council tax increased by 100%.
Second home owners can’t claim it.It would be considered capital and if you have more than £6000 in capital you can’t claim council tax support.
Well said and totally agree
Many Vulnerable people who the Council are mentioning are not unemployed many work
What’s wrong with IOW Council,cuts services(Law Centre, Isle of Wight community action etc that helps people into better work, housing and benefits etc) making poverty worse and then tries to cover this up by cuts 5% off c/tax that other tax payers will have to replace. Why not double c/tax for second holiday home owners?.
Council creates so many problems so it then can look good sorting. Like a garage taking a wire off and telling you needs a new engine, then oh, we could save you money and replace a sensor – but could of just put wire back on. Get rid of CEO and managers who do nothing to help the Island. CEOs are for businesses that are profit driven.
Workers are the vulnerable ones nowadays zero help with anything
Many of those vulnerable people spoken about do work
Keep injecting money into the system and inflation continues to rise. Inflation continues to rise and it’s the people with mortgages which they can barely afford who are in real trouble.
I have been telling the gullible on here for weeks, how the ‘single parents’ and those who pretend to be claim a fortune each week out of the state. The either get now universal credit or child tax credits, AND if working just 16 short hours a week, then claim working tax credits as well.
This adds up to hundreds a week when combined with their wage for the min hours, and child allowance for each child.
They then get cheap or NO council tax and the same with rent.
They get free dental care and prescriptions for the whole family. They get extra cost of living payments and fuel benefits. Free gym membership, free insulation of homes.
Free food banks, free school uniforms, transport, and trips.
See it how it is
Claim for 2 children now, the rules were changed a while ago
Worse still, is all those children bought up by these charity benefit kept parent, or parents, grow up thinking, quite rightly, that they are warm, dry, fed and have a parent or parents at home, never working, or only for a few hours each week, so have no need to aspire to anything else.
By giving ever more to these part time or never work people, you are just reinforcing that view of their numerous off-spring hence we have so many now.
All bad enough, but now thanks to the ‘net’ the world is aware of such, and is coming in droves to jump on the bandwagon.
The UK is finished if benefits aren’t kept to just above existence levels.
The council need to come out here in the real world and see who the ”Vulnerable” ones really are.
They are the disabled the sick and the pensioners, not the ones claiming more free handouts than a workman earns and paying nothing into the system, seems to me they get benefits for everything while the genuinely ill get THEIRS questioned or even stopped
I see all of the mouth-breathers are out in force again.
Never mind that the majority claiming LCTS on the Isle of Wight are pensioners.
But, hey, when have facts ever stopped you lot venting your geriatric spleens at young Islanders, eh?
It’s not “all of the”. It’s one or two at most.
I was wondering why there seems to be so many people posting such vile comments. Then I noticed that most of them were saying the same thing. Not just the same opinion but, literally the same phrases.
Did a bit of checking.
The security and moderation on this site is pathetic. You can enter any old made-up name and email address and post the most vile stuff imaginable. No checks, no need to verify your email address, not moderated for illegal content, nothing.
Absolute sewer.
Hello. I’m isle of wighter and I like wearing women’s underwear.
And I’m not even a lumberjack.
Well, would you look at that. You actually can just post with any name and any made up email address.
absolute sewer – guess that is why you are here timms, in your comfort zone of a sewer – posting your vile hatred of others having opinions that differ to yours.
and Island Echo do moderate the messages – I have had plenty not published
if it is such a sewer – why are you here timms.
Sewers need people to clean them, wighter.
Otherwise they fill up with vile excrement.
Excrement like you.
You post your hatred of poor people who rely on benefits.
I post my hatred of people like you who lie about them.
As you say, difference of opinion.
If you walk into a bar swinging your fists, someone is going to punch you in the face.
guess you have been battered several times then smiffy…
perhaps it is lost on you that a lot of those “pensioners” are the first generation to have spent their entire lives sponging off the state and slid seamlessly from unemployment benefit/housing benefit and a whole host of other benefits onto state pension, as well as universal credit. These recent pensioners, that are over 65 now, were born in the late 1950’s and hit working age in the mid 1970’s and by the time they were over 25, which was in the 1980’s – they were in council housing, claiming state benefits and doing nothing, except raising the army of kids they had.
Their kids are now in their 40’s at least and are second generation benefit claimants, with their own brood already into late teens, claiming benefits as well.
why are the disabled & pensioners being targeted here? i’m disabled now, I paid my taxes for over 30 years, my partner is a pensioner & paid his taxes too, neither of us have a 2nd home, look closer to home people, ask whoever in county hall