I received an update earlier this week on how the council is processing payments under the Council Tax Energy Rebate scheme. I've published the update below for information:
We began to process these payments daily for direct debit payers on 20 April 2022.
The team are continuing to
make the weekly ‘mop-up’ payments to those who set up a direct debit to pay
their council tax to start in May or where, as a result of the verification
process (where we are required to put all the proposed payments through the
Governments “spotlight” system), further checks were required before a payment
is released.
We
have also made Discretionary Fund payments to eligible households in Band A to
H properties in receipt of full CTR and to households in bands E to H
properties in receipt of CTR where we hold direct debit details. The
discretionary scheme provides households in bands E to H in receipt of Council
Tax Reduction (CTR) a £150 payment (currently 404 households) and an additional
‘top up’ payment of £25 to households in bands A to H in receipt of maximum CTR
(currently 40,028 households).
To date, we have made
140,008 payments in relation to the main scheme, totalling £21,001,200 and made
payments worth £84,725 from the Discretionary fund
Last week the
team moved onto the £150 (£175 for bands A to D on full CTR) Energy Rebate
payments for non-direct debit payers with letters starting to be issued on 19
May 2022. Over the coming weeks we will be writing to all 79,000 non-direct
debit payers in bands A to D inviting them to apply online for the payment;
with assistance from Customer Services where needed. Given the volumes and the
need to ensure the system works correctly and is not overloaded, we are issuing
these in a phased way; with the most vulnerable households being contacted
first, so 2,000 letters (for council tax accounts with full CTR) were sent out
last week. With a further 12,000 letters sent out this week and we will
be dialling up the volumes over the coming days and weeks.
The
process involves putting the individual applications through the Government’s
verification tool and then manually checking those identified through this
process as requiring further investigation; this is quite resource intensive
which is another reason why we need to do it in phases. We have brought in
additional resources in order to fully support getting the payments out as
quickly as possible.
We
are issuing separate letters to students who occupy self-contained individually
banded properties in ‘student villages’ who qualify for a payment but do not
have their own council tax reference number. The process for this requires
additional information from the students to make eligibility checks; we are
working with Durham University to ensure that students are made aware of the
scheme and the eligibility criteria.
For more details about help with rising energy costs please refer to the website at: Council tax support with rising energy costs - Durham County Council. We are also updating our Customer Services messaging to ensure that residents are aware of the scheme and to reassure that those who await the payment will receive a letter from us in the coming weeks
