Have your say on Council Tax changes - Local news

Sponsored by

Have your say on Council Tax changes

Guardian News

Published on 09/10/2012 17:21

Rotherham residents still have time to tell the council their views on a new discount Council Tax scheme being proposed for the borough.

Public consultation started last Monday on the new local Council Tax support scheme being proposed by the Rotherham Council in wake of the shake-up of the Government’s funding system, which will leave the authority with a multi-million pound shortfall.

From next April the Government will abolish the current national Council Tax Benefit scheme, which funds 100 per cent of Council Tax benefits.

During 2011/12 the council awarded some £22.8 million to 31,000 claimants, including 15,000 were pensioners.

But the national scheme is to be replaced by local ones to be set up by individual authorities, who will each receive a set figure as an annual grant.

Rotherham estimates that the government proposals could result in at least a £4.1 million funding shortfall.

Information about the changes is available online at www.rotherham.gov.uk or in a leaflet available at all Rotherham Council customer service centres.

Deputy leader Coun Jahangir Akhtar described the changes as ‘far-reaching’ and urged the public to make their views known.

“We are having to make these very big changes because by abolishing the current national Council Tax Benefit scheme the Government is leaving Rotherham with a huge shortfall,” he said.

“Obviously the changes could affect a great many people - Council Tax payers and working age claimants - as well as the Council itself. That is why we need to hear everyone’s views on our proposals.”

The authority has until the end of January to adopt a new local scheme.

News

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Inside the Gainsborough Standard this week

Sponsored by
Have your say on Council Tax changes

Top stories

News