24 October 2003
Pensioner and anti-council tax groups are to oppose the move led by Kent County Council to give elderly people a discount on the amount of tax they pay.
The idea surfaced last month when Kent and Hampshire councils both urged that pensioners should have their tax payments reduced, possibly to the inflation rate.
Under the Local Government Act 2003 councils have the power to give discounts to any group of residents.
However, they must make up the shortfall by increasing the charge to others. It is this factor that has united the National Pensioners Forum and the Is It Fair? campaign in opposition.
Forum spokesman Neil Duncan Jordan said: 'We are not supporting this idea. We want an increase in the state pension so that pensioners can pay their way.
'The people who would pay for this would be our members' sons and daughters and that makes no sense at all. Kent's idea is still not linked to the ability to pay.'
John Melsom, a pensioner and founder of Is It Fair?, which campaigns for a local tax related to ability to pay, said a pensioner discount was 'a very bad idea as it only tinkers with the problem'.
His group, which claims 3,000 supporters, does 'not see why the young should be expected to pay extra for pensioners'.
A Kent spokesman said the county was still committed to the idea, although it was omitted from a Cabinet report on Monday, which talked only of restraining council tax rises in general.
Council tax is collected by district councils in shires, and they would either have to shoulder the cost of administering a differential rate for pensioners or else the county council would have to give direct refunds.
A spokeswoman for Gravesham council, in north Kent, said the extra administration costs were 'something we'd have to look at'.
Local government minister Nick Raynsford last week told the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives' conference that councils now had 'freedom to introduce discounts on council tax, and to reduce discounts on second homes and empty homes'.
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