Severe disability and carers council tax exemption

daviddee

Hi.

I'd recently heard about these exemptions for council tax exemption if you were a carer and severe learning disability, so I filled in a form last November. . Our circumstances at the time I filled in the form, were that there was myself, the one wage earner, my wife a carer and our daughter who is learning disabled and who had reached 18 in 1995

Our learning disabled daughter was about to move out into supported living in December 2016, so knew that it wouldn't be worth bothering to claim, if we couldn't get it back dated. But thought we'd first establish the right to two exceptions based on having a carer and a disabled adult in the house

Anyway, after submitting the form, I didn't hear anything for two months, by which time my daughter had moved into her supported living, so I contacted them at the end of January to ask what was happening and a lady phoned me at home from the council office to say, oh there was 3 of you in the house so you don't qualify.

So I said hang on a minute, aren't carer exempt and she very reluctantly said yes, but there's still two of you in the house and was about to put the phone down, so again I had to say, just a moment as my daughters learning disabled, wouldn't she be excempt in her own right and she got right shirty and said well she will get a discount for being a single person in her new accommodation and I had to say again, that's not what I'm talking about, wouldn't she be excempt when she lived at home and she said well not all learning disabled people qualify you know, so unless you can prove she's severely disabled you won't get it.

I told her that I believe she would be considered as severely disabled and before moving to PIP she had been getting DLA at middle rate and when she on income support, part of it was paid as severe disability element, she had since moved onto ESA in 2015 and was put into the support group, she had recently been moved from DLA to PIP, where they'd assessed her as needing the higher rate for both care and mobility, she had a social services assessment in place where she has a package of daily support care. She very reluctantly then said, well you'll have to get the doctor to sign a form, I'll send you one.

Once I've got the doctor to fill in the form, I intend to submit it with the ESA medical report which states she "meets the criteria for the support group as they have a severe functional disability", the pip award letter and the social workers report.

But before I go to the doctors and pay him £50 to fill in the form, I was wondering If anyone thought we would qualify for a 25% discount and if so, how do I go about getting it backdated.

As far as the backdated period to 1995 is concerned, our two younger daughters have now both left, home, but were in full time education, until they were 22, so thought they may be classed as full time students and I'm thinking should be exempt too, one daughter worked for a little while after leaving full time education and before leaving home, so I know that period won't count and my wife worked part time for two years around 2004, so that period won't count either.

Does anyone have my thoughts on the chance of getting it backdated based on our family circumstances?

Thanks.