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Cost of living support

Financial advice and emotional support on how you can ease the cost of living squeeze.

Apply for LCTS

How to apply for Local Council Tax Support (LCTS) to help you pay your Council Tax if you're on a low income or claiming benefits.

Eligibility

You can apply for LCTS if you own your home, rent, are unemployed or working.

What you get depends on:

  • where you live - each council runs its own scheme
  • your circumstances (e.g. income, number of children, benefits, residency status)
  • your household income - this includes savings, pensions and your partner's income
  • If your children live with you
  • if other adults live with you

 

Apply

Applying for LCTS online takes between 10 minutes and 30 minutes, select "make a new claim".

Apply for LCTS

When claiming LCTS you can also claim Housing Benefit.

Evidence required

When you make a claim for council tax support you will need to supply evidence to support your claim.

We must see original documents, not copies. If you bring them to the council offices we will take the details we need to and give you the documents back straight away. If you do not provide all the evidence we need we might not be able to pay you any support. We need the same evidence for your partner, if you have one, and or any other adults living in your home.

If you are unable to provide the evidence we need at the moment, you may still be able to send in an application and send the evidence later. 

Examples of acceptable documents to support your claim.

Evidence of identity

We must see evidence of you and your partner's identity and National Insurance number. If you or your partner are asylum seekers, you must provide your current Home Office letter.

Examples of evidence include your birth certificate, marriage certificate, passport, National Insurance number card, medical card, driving licence, UK residence permit, current Home Office letter, EU identity card or recent gas or electricity bill. We may need to see several of these documents for each adult resident in your home.

Evidence of National Insurance number

Acceptable evidence would be a National Insurance number card, payslips or letters from social security or the tax office. 

Evidence of savings, investments and property

Acceptable evidence would be letters from your bank, building society or post office books, full bank statements, or certificates for premium bonds, National savings Certificates, ISAs Tessas, stocks and unit trusts. The evidence you send must show details for at least the last 2 months, even if the balance is overdrawn.

People who have more than £16000 in capital are not eligible to receive support (although special rules apply to people of pension age). Capital includes money, property, land also held outside the United Kingdom.

Evidence of Earnings - for you, your partner and any other adults resident

This means your last 5 payslips if you are paid every week, your last 3 payslips if you are paid every 2 weeks, or your last 2 payslips if you are paid every month. We can send a form to your employer to fill in if you do not have these payslips.

If you or your partner are self-employed, we need to see your accounts for the last financial year or, if you have been trading for less than 6 months, a summary of your trading records so far.

  Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit and LCTS Self-Employed Earnings Form (PDF) [45KB]

Evidence of other income

Acceptable evidence examples are pension slips from a former employer or a letter from the court showing how much maintenance you are getting. We need to see evidence of any money people pay you for board and lodgings.

Evidence of benefits, allowances, tax credits, pension credits or pensions, for you, your partner and any other adults resident in your home.

Acceptable evidence would be a current award notices or letters from the Department for Work and Pensions or HMRC confirming how much you get. If you do not have evidence, let us know straight away.

 

Backdating claims

In special circumstances, we may be able to backdate your claim. This means that we can pay you benefit from an earlier date than you have claimed from.

To qualify for backdating, you must be able to show that:

  • you had a good reason for not claiming benefit earlier; and
     
  • your reason or reasons for not claiming earlier lasted until you actually made your claim (for example, if you were in hospital and made a claim as soon as possible after leaving hospital, we would treat this as continuous good cause)
     
  • we will usually need to see proof of the things you tell us about. For example, in the situation above, we would need to see a letter from the hospital or your doctor confirming your illness and the length of time you were in hospital

We can only backdate a claim for up to one month for people of a working age and three months for pensioners from the date we receive your claim or request for backdating. You must clearly give the period you would like us to consider backdating your claim to cover. Local Council Tax Support can only ever be backdated by 3 months.

Your request must be in writing.

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