Council Tax Reduction: Caseload and Expenditure, Scotland, 2013-14

3. Background notes

3.1 Summary of methodology

From 1 April 2013 Council Tax Benefit (CTB), which was run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), was abolished and replaced by the Scottish Government's Council Tax Reduction (CTR) Scheme. Since then, the Scottish Government have asked all local authorities (LAs) to provide individual record level extracts on a monthly basis to enable monitoring of the caseload and expenditure of the CTR scheme. Their continued co-operation is gratefully acknowledged.

There are two types of records contained in the CTR extract which might feed into caseload statistics. 'D' records are 'live' cases extracted on a specified date, which is called the count date, although LAs can provide data up to a week after that count date^[2]. 'C' records are cases that have been 'closed' since the previous count date. The CTR data count dates for April 2013 to March 2014 for all LAs are shown below.

Using 'C' records will identify short term claims that were live on the count date but not on the extraction date either side of this date. 'C' Records will also be used to check that 'D' records had not in fact finished before the count date.

'C' records do not contain information on total weekly award amount. To enable total weekly expenditure figures to be estimated, it has been assumed that the weekly award for 'C' records was the same as the average weekly award for each local authority and benefit type, based on the 'D' records for the given month.

For information on total CTR expenditure across the year (as in Table 2 of this publication), the Scottish Government's Council Tax and Community Charge Receipts Return (CTRR) has been used. This aggregate return collects data from LAs on the total amounts of Council Tax billed, including the amounts of CTR applied. It is submitted after the end of the financial year but before annual audit is completed, and is therefore provisional. These financial returns are approved by LA Directors of Finance and follow accountancy standards where applicable.

CTRR gives better overall expenditure estimates than the monthly extracts, which are snapshots and will include CTR application records that are subsequently revised by LAs. CTRR represents the billing and award position for the year as a whole.

3.2 Data quality

As part of the quality assurance procedure, the Scottish Government carries out validation checks on the incoming data to identify possible errors. Potential problems are identified in a number of ways, including comparing the data received to: other known sources; data from previous months and years; and data from other local authorities. Where appropriate, views are also sought from policy colleagues - for example where a change in the data may be attributable to a policy change. To ensure the data are of a high quality, the Scottish Government then works with the relevant local authorities to resolve any data issues identified.

Any revisions and corrections to this publication and previous editions of it, such as those in Table 1 and Table 3, are carried out in line with the Scottish Government's corrections and revisions policy:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/About/compliance

3.3 Further information

A full methodology guide can be found at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Local-Government-Finance/Methodology

More information on Local Government Finance statistics at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Local-Government-Finance