£100 council tax rebates will cost "over £3m"

3:50am Sunday 30th November 2008

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THE costs of distributing council tax rebates to pensioners could end up exceeding the £3million Essex County Council had expected to pay, it has been claimed.

Labour leader Paul Kirkman warned locating the 30,000 most needy households and sorting out the paperwork to pay them £100 each would leave the ruling Tories with a hefty administration bill.

He spoke after the £100 bonus, either as a lump sum or money off council tax, was announced by Tory county council leader Lord Hanningfield.

Mr Kirkman said he backed the scheme in principle, but argued it might be more prudent to invest in a programme to make sure elderly people were claiming all the permanent benefits available to them from the Government.

He said: “This rebate will be a one-off, whereas the Government schemes are permanent.

“I think we might be better off employing people to go out and make residents aware of what money they are entitled to.”

Lord Hanningfield said he had decided to offer it first to the 30,000 households, as it had been relativelyeasy to identify the group of pensioners in their eighties using existing records.