why i do not recieve council tax benefit

aimee0763

handyman27 wrote: »

Hi All,
I wante advice from this forum, as i am on Low income and i recieve working tax credit and child tax credit at the maximum, as i only work 16 hours a week with the minimum rate £5.83 and hour due to lack of work where i work, as they lost majority of orders due to Recession.

However in 2004 i had savings of £30,000 which i was using for renovation the building which i brought. However at the time i did not notify the council i had the savings due to i was going to spend the money on this gutted house. They found out and stopped my rebate and i had to pay back from 2002 and the years and they took me to court and found me guilty for not notifying them. However i have spent all my savings on the building work like loft conversion, central heating, double glazing, new wiring, roofing and i have showed them the invoice and they will not accept this as reducing savings, as they said they will just take every year so much savings off and work it out this way.

Every year i have filled in an rebate application form, but they refuse to give rebate, as they saying i have still have the savings theoritically.

you have to don't have 2 pennies to rub together to get any money off the benefit people so as long as you've got money they will not give you anything, it looks to me you were aware of your savings and decided to spend it on your house then you expect the benefit people to pay you money it doesn't happen like that there are genuine poor people without a penny that would never see the amount you've saved they should be receive help if you've managed to have £30,000 savings then you can do so again.

Chrysalis

handyman27 wrote: »

Hi All,
I wante advice from this forum, as i am on Low income and i recieve working tax credit and child tax credit at the maximum, as i only work 16 hours a week with the minimum rate £5.83 and hour due to lack of work where i work, as they lost majority of orders due to Recession.

However in 2004 i had savings of £30,000 which i was using for renovation the building which i brought. However at the time i did not notify the council i had the savings due to i was going to spend the money on this gutted house. They found out and stopped my rebate and i had to pay back from 2002 and the years and they took me to court and found me guilty for not notifying them. However i have spent all my savings on the building work like loft conversion, central heating, double glazing, new wiring, roofing and i have showed them the invoice and they will not accept this as reducing savings, as they said they will just take every year so much savings off and work it out this way.

Every year i have filled in an rebate application form, but they refuse to give rebate, as they saying i have still have the savings theoritically.

basically the black and white of it is, double glazing, loft conversion, central heating are all non essentials so they treated it as if you blown the cash on luxuries. Thats the hard life of claiming benefits.

handyman27

Thank you all for your replies.

This money was not told to the council, as i was spending the money on the gutted house i bought. Windows were rotted, so they needed to be changing. In this day and aged you need central heating especially the victorian house and too cold in winter. Loft conversion was done, as i was in the process of lowering the high ceiling to heat the room quicker in the bedrooms, as i had no intention of doing the loft conversion. My loft only costed £4000, as there were no dormer involved, so this is the reason i made the loft and nothing fancy, just basic and according to Building regulation and apporved by the building inspector.

I had no intention of claiming benefit, but due to my reduced hours from the previous employer for a long time which made me claim the CTB and due to less hours i intended to start renovation in the house.

It had old wiring and dangerous. The plumbing were old lead pipes and the you only get one bucket of warm water and the plumber said the hot water back boiler had it days, as the heat exchanger was cracked.

Plaster were falling off, Rising damp in few places but not all over. Bathroom suite had to be changed, as the flush kept flusing it self and due to very old system it could not be fixed by the plumber, so had to changed the bathroom suite.

So as you can see i had to make the house up to habitable living standard.

welshmoneylover

Bet your house looks lovely though!

handyman27

There is lot of other jobs needs to be done, as the house is not fully plastered yet, no wardrobe, few kitchen units still needs to be hanged yet, few room carpeted only and the house only few rooms painted.

viktory

Sounds like intentional deprivation of capital.

Indie_Kid

handyman27 wrote: »

There is lot of other jobs needs to be done, as the house is not fully plastered yet, no wardrobe, few kitchen units still needs to be hanged yet, few room carpeted only and the house only few rooms painted.

Not all the rooms in my parents house are carpeted and it was only recently (we've lived there for around 15 years) that their room was painted - up until then, it was how it was when we moved in.

Chrysalis

yeah, when times are rough its expected people to put up with things like unpainted rooms and no central heating.

I have sat and thought about this and I expect you could have fixed the absolute essentials for a lot less than 30k, that is quite a lot of money. It seems clear the council tax benefit department agree with me hence the lack of benefit award.

To give you an example, the state of my carpets are they covered in stains and worn out patches, I have damp in my bathroom, my toilet leaks, my boiler is on its last legs and inefficient, my windows are rotting giving me loads of cold draft air and I have stains on the kitchen wall from a leak that happened form upstairs over a year ago. With all this I am able to live in this property I can survive. when you lose your job you are expected to accept a change in the standard of living.

PipsoG

Think yourself very lucky that you didn't get a custodial sentence! You are a convicted benefit fraudster - you got found out and now you have to pay the consequences for however long it takes and that is nothing less that the law states you deserve.

Council Tax fraud is a criminal offence and you cannot claim ignorence of the law as a defence.

There is only a certain amount of money available to support people who are either not working or on a low income. Why should you gain money from the rest of the tax payers?

You have a property and this is bound to have some value. There a millions of people all over the world who cannot afford to do the things they want to do due to lack of money.

You will continue to have Notional Capital as long as it is considered that the money over and above the maximum capital is in place - this figure will reduce by an amount each year and this reduction in capital is calculated using a formula.

As you have lied in the past you need to regain the trust you destroyed and this will take as long as it takes, no more or no less.

gfplux

This should be lesson to all of us. When you are found to be lying the benefits office have a long memory.