Nottingham City Council's Savage Cuts

Nottingham City Council is proposing a savage attack on Council Tax Benefits

·         Every working age person and their partner would have to pay at least 20% of their Council Tax bill - with some similarity to the poll tax, an unwaged person on their own would be paying 20% of the bill

·         Council Tax Benefit would be based on a maximum of a band B property. Therefore,  if one member of a couple worked and one did not and the working person lost their job – they would pay:

·         If in a band B property, £251 per year - £5 a week

·         If in a band D property £606.92 a year – £11.67 per week – a massive 37% of their council tax

It gets worse

·         If people are able to save up for retirement or lose their job and receive some  redundancy money, if a person and/or their partner has savings above £6,000, they will not be entitled to any council Tax Benefit

·         And to add insult to injury- if a claim is not in on time and there can be many reasons for that – no backdating will be allowed!

·         The council is also considering  stopping CTB if the amount due  to a recipient is less than £2/week or £4/week

·         These proposals mean that many people will not be able to pay their council tax

·         Rather than pass on Con-Dem cuts, Nottingham and all other councils should refuse to pass government cuts on and should be building a massive campaign to fight for properly funded councils. Nottingham City Council say they lost a massive £60million in real terms in 2011/12.  Councils like Nottingham should stop using highly paid external consultants which costs £millions

If the councils do not want to fight for fully funded schemes, we need to build a massive community campaign involving the trade unions, many of whose members are facing these attacks.