Council Tax Reduction: April to June 2020

Council Tax Reduction in Scotland, April to June 2020

This quarterly publication provides statistics on the Council Tax Reduction (CTR) scheme. The CTR scheme reduces the Council Tax (CT) liability of lower income households in Scotland. A CTR 'recipient' can be a single person or a couple, with or without children, since CT is charged on a per-dwelling basis, rather than to individuals.

The statistics are based on data extracts from local authorities, and cover the time period April to June 2020. The publication therefore covers the period when some of the wider impacts of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic began to affect the CTR figures.

Key Points

• There were 497,960 CTR recipients in Scotland in June 2020, an increase of 1.6 per cent between April and June 2020.
• The total weekly income forgone by local authorities on CTR in June 2020 was £7.334 million.
• The total number of CTR recipients in Scotland increased sharply in April 2020 (to 490,160 from 469,370 in March 2020) with further increases recorded during this quarter as a result of the economic impacts of Covid-19.
• There were increases in the total weekly CTR awarded in April 2020 and during the quarter as a result of the increases in CTR recipients and also due to the annual increases in CT bills.The weekly income forgone figure is now at its highest level since the scheme began (as shown in Chart 1 below).