Asking council to average childcare disregard

fiodyl

Is it possible to ask the council to average the childcare disregard they apply to my income with regard to my housing benefit and council tax reduction? Has anyone done this before and are they likely to say yes?


The reason I would like them to do this is not just to make it easier to budget i.e receiving the same amount every week, as happens with my tax credit payments, but also because the current system means I receive £400 less over the year than I would if it were averaged.

Housing_Benefit_Officer

Provide details of when your child care costs go up or down.

fiodyl

Housing_Benefit_Officer wrote: »

Provide details of when your child care costs go up or down.

Does this mean provide the council with those details or provide them here?


I have already provided all the details to the council, covering the last 2 years of childcare payments I've made. While the amounts I pay do vary throughout the year there is a fixed pattern that is unlikely to change (barring redundancy/change of career etc.) of £75 pw during term times (39 weeks a year), £142.50pw in school holidays (12 weeks) and 1 week of zero childcare costs.


HMRC take these figures and work out an average of something like £85pw in childcare costs and then use this to pay an amount of CTC that stays the same year round.


The council then count that CTC to be part of my income for housing benefit purposes, but only disregard actual childcare payments on a week by week basis. This means effectively they are calculating my entitlement based on an income that is higher on paper than it is in reality, for some weeks of the year.


Over the full year this difference works out to be around £300 less housing benefit paid than I would receive if they also averaged my childcare payments, in the same way HMRC do. A similar calculation reduces my council tax reduction amount by a further £100.


Basically I believe that as my income from CTC for childcare is based on average figures, then the disregard of this income for housing benefit/CTR purposes should also be averaged. I'm looking for advice as to whether the council can and/or will do this and possibly any info on how to go about requesting it.

Housing_Benefit_Officer

If it is a fixed pattern of x = term time y = school holidays and z = no charges then yes they should be averaging 1 years child care costs over a year.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/236962/hbgm-bw2-assessment-of-income.pdf

W2.174 onwards.

Ask for a redetermination of your claim quoting the above chapter from the guidance manual.