Following a campaign by three councils’ in South Worcestershire over 1,000 single person discounts were removed from people who were not entitled to receive them. This has raised additional Council Tax revenue of at least £250,000 annually and this could now rise to over £500,000.
The shared service wrote to another 1,500 residents during December asking them to make contact or face having their single person discount removed. Approximately 1,200 residents have still not made contact despite being written to at least 3 times.
Nick Jefferies, Head of the Shared Service said “As a result of this review many hundreds of existing claimants voluntarily withdrew their claim for the discount. In some cases customers had clearly forgotten to inform us that their circumstances had changed, but in others there was clear evidence of abuse of the system. In such cases we will seek to recover Council Tax arrears and institute criminal proceedings if appropriate.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment