Liverpool Council is expected to return more than £800,000 to the UK Government when it finally completes payment of the council tax rebate scheme.
In April, the local authority approved acceptance of around £32m from Whitehall to mobilise the scheme providing £150 to households across the city to support them with rising energy costs. It is now expected that the programme, which has been much maligned and encountered a damaging data breach, will come in under budget and result in funds returning to the government.
According to a report to Liverpool Council’s finance and resources select committee, as of July 1, 92,807 out of approximately 97,000 households that pay their council tax by direct debit had received the rebate. A further 2,462 cases are still pending owing to the residents being required to provide further information.
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A total of 1,450 cases were determined to be ineligible. The council has come in for criticism of its handling of the scheme, with many residents not receiving payments well after the original target of late April into May.
At the start of the scheme, it was identified that there were around 113,000 households that paid council tax other than by direct debit, including 775 council employees who paid via their salary. As of the start of this month, only 8% of those had received payment.
The report said 7,842 households in this group had received payment into their bank account with 1,081 of these being assisted by the contact centre and one stop shops. A further 1,750 residents had requested the payment to be credited to their council tax account.
Around 3,200 claims are awaiting processing, or awaiting for further information from the resident, and 100 have been determined to be ineligible. The scheme was hit by an embarrassing data breach and the council was forced to apologise after 10,000 letters relating to the rebate were issued incorrectly.
Council officials realised that the wrong names had been placed on the letters and sent out to addresses throughout the city. An investigation is now underway and this phase of the rebate scheme is under review.
The report said: “This review will determine how the scheme can best be delivered going forward so that payments are made quickly to residents whilst ensuring the scheme remains secure and robust.” Based on returns for 2021, the government allocated £32m to Liverpool Council to administer the scheme.
This assumed 215,367 households would be eligible for a payment, but data analysis and payments made to date have indicated that the total number of households eligible for a payment could be approximately 210,000. The report said: “On this basis it would result in the council returning £805k funds to the Government for the core scheme.”
The progress of the rebate scheme will be debated by councillors at Liverpool Town Hall next week.
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