AQW 13838/22-27

Mr Robbie Butler
Ulster Unionist Party
Lagan Valley

Tabled Date: 26/06/2024
Answered On Date: 05/07/2024
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Finance to detail any plans for a domestic rates reduction for single dwellers, particularly single parents and carers.

Answer:

Our tailored suite of domestic rates support includes: -

a Lone Pensioner Allowance providing a 20% discount to persons aged 70 or over who live alone;

Housing Benefit and Rate Rebate schemes providing means tested help for people struggling to pay rates;

a Low Income Rate Relief Scheme, essentially a “top up” of Housing Benefit support, which contains a 20% uplift in the carer premium to increase the amount of rate relief provided for carers.

I have no plans to introduce a single occupancy discount here. It was given detailed consideration by the Executive in 2007 during fundamental changes to the domestic rating system. It was ruled out at that time, with such a widespread discount difficult to justify on grounds of cost, need and vulnerability to fraud. These same considerations continue to apply today.

Domestic rates here are a tax on property, whereas England, Scotland and Wales apply Council Tax, a hybrid of personal and property tax. Within that system a single occupancy discount applies. In England alone for the period between 2020 to 2022 a total of 32,669 incorrect claims were detected for the Council Tax Single Person Discount, leading to £44.7m fraudulent or wrongly received payments. This was reported on within the 2022 National Fraud Initiative Report.