Council tax reduction question

Stormy817

Good evening I'm hoping someone can help me. My mum will be migrating over to UC soon from income related ESA. Someone on Facebook has told her that her PIP will be taken into account in full when applying for CTR. They said she even may have to pay some rent even though her rent is £122 and the LHA is £175 for Milton Keynes. She's panicking so I'd like some official advice to show her please.

She's a single person and nobody claims carers allowance for her. She also has an adapted property because she's disabled. She is on high pip for both.

Thanks 

KxMx

Council Tax Reduction is decided on at a local level and each local authority has different rules for this. 

Some councils have started counting PIP as income, and some areas do treat UC differently to legacy benefits. 

So due to these factors some people have seen an increase in the amount of CT they have to pay. 

I'd suggest your starting point is here:

https://www.milton-keynes.gov.uk/benefits/information-claiming-council-tax-reduction

With UC your mum's LHA entitlement should be unchanged for Housing Element. 

Rubyroobs

Stormy817 said:

Good evening I'm hoping someone can help me. My mum will be migrating over to UC soon from income related ESA. Someone on Facebook has told her that her PIP will be taken into account in full when applying for CTR. They said she even may have to pay some rent even though her rent is £122 and the LHA is £175 for Milton Keynes. She's panicking so I'd like some official advice to show her please.

She's a single person and nobody claims carers allowance for her. She also has an adapted property because she's disabled. She is on high pip for both.

Thanks 

Some councils are now taking PIP as income. Our local one is. I'm not sure how many others are. many people also find that when they switch to UC they need to pay more council tax than they did previously. 

marcia_

 Yes a benefit checker said we could get about £10 a month council tax support but when I applied they counted my pip and was awarded nothing 

NedS

marcia_ said:

 Yes a benefit checker said we could get about £10 a month council tax support but when I applied they counted my pip and was awarded nothing 

I'm guessing it is extremely difficult for the online benefit checkers to accurately calculate entitlement to Council Tax reduction given that each local authority can use it's own rules, and published information about what each consider income to be taken into account is not always available.