Council tax support gone completely after moving to UC

Goldenretrieversarelife

Hi so my mum has moved to UC from ESA and she received council tax support did have a 100% award but had 2 non dependent deductions for me and my sister and her bill was £93 to pay each month then when she moved to UC she was told it was being reduced to 80% and her new amount to pay was £122. 

Now ESA has finally confirmed she was in the support group UC have added the LCWRA to her UC and the council were told and now she's had another updated bill today stating her council tax support is. Now £0.00 and she has to pay £166 a month now. We can thankfully pay this now due to be being in work again however mum has done benefits calculators entitled one and the Turn2us one and both say she should be eligible for 30% council tax support but council say no your UC has reduced it to £0 and everything is correct but this is disgusting when UC is a benefit not income. Is there anything she can do? 

Rubyroobs

Does her award letter explain how they have calculated it? Each council sets their own rules. In the city I live in the council have started taking PIP into account as income yet the benefit calculator is not factoring this in so we are having to calculate it is correct from the award letter. 

Goldenretrieversarelife

Rubyroobs said:

Does her award letter explain how they have calculated it? Each council sets their own rules. In the city I live in the council have started taking PIP into account as income yet the benefit calculator is not factoring this in so we are having to calculate it is correct from the award letter. 

Nope just says is 

 charge for period April 2025 - march 2026 
 council tax support April 2025-may 2025 
 council tax support £0.00 
Payments made so far 

Then it just says the remaining balance things is our council tax bills never have stated how they calculated it our bills have always been like that. 

KxMx

You can ask them for a written breakdown, or use their website to read the policy documents which should have various figures included. 

Muttleythefrog

I do think you need a breakdown of how they have calculated the council tax support to understand this and make sure they're using correct figures for income. If anything like my council they separately do this from the council tax document itself.... within the benefits division.

Goldenretrieversarelife

KxMx said:

You can ask them for a written breakdown, or use their website to read the policy documents which should have various figures included. 

 Just found it on there website and according to there own website she should not receive £0 CT support. 

It states that based on mum's weekly UC award she would be entitled to a 30% reduction however she has me and my sister living at home so that's a £10.75 per week deduction each so I first took 30% away from the remaining balance for this year and then the figure it gave me I took of 2 10.75 off for the remaining months we pay and it came to just under £200 of support still so not sure why it's £0 I think we'll have to ask

Goldenretrieversarelife

Mum has just heard back she doesn't phone because of anxiety issues so emailed them for a breakdown and this is what they sent and it still doesn't really help us understand. 

Muttleythefrog

A completely useless letter from the council.... no breakdown at all... it's like saying black is black because it's black.

You need a calculated assessment of CTS from their benefits division (which may be separate from Council Tax who she may have contacted)  or equivalent who calculate the benefit... it should include looking at incomes etc. Otherwise it's difficult for anyone including us to understand. Try getting the email address of that division responsible for calculating CTS. Certainly with my council these documents are generated every time an assessment of CTS is calculated.

Robbie64

Hopefully your local council will explain the calculation better than mine. I queried how the council tax support I receive had been calculated and the reply made less sense than the original letter they sent.

The council tax I have to pay has gone from £0 each month to £68 each month simply by moving from ESA to UC. Recipients of the old means tested benefits such as ESA, JSA and IS had no council tax to pay from April (previously we all had to pay £7.00 per month up to the end of March) as the council moved to a banded income scheme. My income hasn't changed, only the ESA-IR has moved to UC. I worked for benefits in various guises for over 20 years and even I can't made sense of how the calculation was done (for the record I actually worked out my income was more than the council calculated, although it was in the same band and therefore no worry about underpaying. I simply wanted an explanation of how my income had been calculated and it doesn't matter how I calculate it, I end up with £16 per week more than the council have calculated).

Goldenretrieversarelife

Muttleythefrog said:

A completely useless letter from the council.... no breakdown at all... it's like saying black is black because it's black.

You need a calculated assessment of CTS from their benefits division (which may be separate from Council Tax who she may have contacted)  or equivalent who calculate the benefit... it should include looking at incomes etc. Otherwise it's difficult for anyone including us to understand. Try getting the email address of that division responsible for calculating CTS. Certainly with my council these documents are generated every time an assessment of CTS is calculated.

She emailed back to that email and it's been nearly 2 weeks and no reply so we looked online and there's no separate email for council tax support there's just a number which is of no use she doesn't use the phone and they won't speak to anyone but her and then there's just a forum you can fill in which is how we've been contacting them so she's filled that in again requesting a full breakdown of how they came to £0 support including figures they are using. 

Goldenretrieversarelife

Well it's been 2 weeks since she sent the form off again and no reply they usually reply within 5 working days so I think there ignoring her and she's just going to have to leave it because we can't keep filling the form in. Personally I think it's disgusting that she requested for a complete breakdown and nothing.