The London Borough of Hillingdon boasts that the Audit Commission was impressed by the way it administers council tax discounts. It is a pity that the Audit Commission does not check whether the Borough was complying with the law and doing the job properly, especially as the Commission has a remit to ensure proper governance and the effective delivery of services.
Proper governance, obviously, involves complying with legal requirements.
If you ring Hillingdon, and ask about discounts, they will tell you that if two adults are resident the full tax is payable. You can point out that some adults are disregarded, and they will repeat their assertion, justifying this by reference to some guidance notes they have in the office and on their internal internet. If, curious, you ask them to send this guidance, they do.
The guidance is full of nonsense about the tax being made up of a property element and a person element. Why waste valuable space on such junk? I do not know why so many councils falsely assert that the 'full' council tax is based on two residents: the law says nothing of the sort. Who started this nonsense, I wonder?
It says on page two that 'Where the property is occupied by two or more adults aged 18 or over (what other sort of adult is there?) then the tax is payable in full. In case the reader is a complete idiot, the guidance helpfully explains that 'full' means 100%. It is not true that if two adults are resident the full tax is payable. Yes, later on the guide does make this clear, but why make the incorrect statement in the first place?
The guidance leaflet says
'If you are receiving a discount you are obliged by law to inform us if, because of a change of circumstances, you no longer qualify for the discount'.
This may or may not be 'right' depending on what they mean by 'a discount' and 'the discount'.
The leaflet, worryingly, then discusses different types of discount. Page 2 discusses a 'Single person household discount'.
Page 4 mentions 'students and other discounts'. This is legally inaccurate and misleading. 'Student' is a disregard category and not a type of discount. This is what philosophers call a category error, and what I call junk.
Further category errors appear later in the booklet.
Disregarded adults are said to 'qualify for a discount'. The disregarded adult is probably not the person liable to pay and therefore cannot possibly 'qualify' for a discount.
They also seem to expect you to put on the list of residents people who are not deemed to be resident for council tax purposes. This would appear to be none of the business of the council tax department.
The council expects you to fill in an application using various 'codes' to describe disregard categories.
It seems to expect you to keep this information up to date and it falsely states on the web site that it has powers under the law to fine you if you do not. This is utter junk.
And this is the council from whom the Audit Commission took advice, upon the basis of which hundreds and thousands of people have been falsely suspected of fraud. This is the council which drafted the model 'investigation' letter in the legally inaccurate and hitherto secret 'Audit Guide' provided to 'investigators'.
You begin to realise the most probable source of all the junk produced by the Audit Commission in the form of 'Audit Guide' material for investigators.
Laugh! I nearly cried.