SUPPORT for Somerset residents struggling to pay their council tax bills will be cut from April 2025 to save nearly £4m a year.

Somerset Council currently operates a council tax reduction scheme, providing discounts for single people, couples and families.

The council currently spends around £28m on these discounts, of which more than £15m funds discounts to people of working age.

A total of 31,745 council tax payers in Somerset currently receive some form of council tax reduction.

To save nearly £3.9m a year from April 2025, the council will be making four key changes to the council tax support it provides:

  • Reducing support for working age applicants
  • Introducing a standard non-dependant deduction
  • Restricting support to Band D Council Tax levels
  • Restricting the back dating of council tax reduction

Other eligibility criteria for council tax relief will remain unchanged, including:

  • No relief for those with more than £6,000 in capital
  • War pensioners’ pension levels will be disregarded
  • The exceptional hardship scheme will remain in place
  • The first £30 per week for disabled people will continue to be disregarded

The council estimates these changes will affect 69 per cent of working age people who currently claim some kind of council tax support – with each claimant on average having to pay an extra £415.18 a year in council tax.

Deputy leader Liz Leyshon (Liberal Democrats, Street) told the full council in Bridgwater on Wednesday, December 18, that urgent changes to the funding of local government were needed to prevent further burdens being placed on working people.

She said: “We can recognise this is a situation that no council wants to find themselves in, and how council tax is both an unfair and unsatisfactory way to fund local care services.

“The local government financial settlements has just come out, and our finance team are working very hard in the back office to realise the implications for Somerset.”

Shadow deputy leader Diogo Rodrigues (Conservative, Bridgwater East and Bawdrip) said: “I don’t think that Somerset being an outlier in council tax is a reason to change the policy.

“People with disabilities and the unwell are being marginalised.”

Council leader Bill Revans (Liberal Democrats, North Petherton) said: “We do not know the impact of the government’s financial settlement.

“I know there has been substantial lobbying across all councils of all flavours around the increase in national insurance, which will impact our care providers and impact on us greatly.

“We try and ask budget questions which are fair to elucidate answers which genuinely reflect what the people of Somerset think. We’re not trying to game the system.

“An increase above the council tax cap may be needed, but at the moment that’s just an exploration.”

The council is currently predicting a budget gap of £88.8m for 2025/26 – though this falls to £53.8m when its staff restructuring programme (also known as the transformation programme) is taken into account.

The full council will meet to set the budget for 2025/26 in Bridgwater on February 19, 2025.