The Conservative candidate for Caerphilly in May’s Assembly election has criticised the council for the way it hands out financial support to pensioners.
A Welsh Assembly grant will see Caerphilly County Borough Council receive more than
£210,000 this year to pensioners with their council tax bills. Under the Assembly scheme £4 million is being made available to local authorities in Wales.
No guidelines have been laid out to councils on how to distribute the funding. Some give the money to all pensioners while most, such as Caerphilly, give the aid to those already receiving council tax benefit. The council is yet to make a decision on how the money will be distributed this year.
Tory candidate Owen Meredith wants the council to provide a flat rate of support to all pensioners living in the county borough.
He said: “This is a great scheme and I give credit to the Assembly Government for introducing it. However, I am disappointed that Caerphilly Council took decisions which failed to help hundreds
of pensioners who are really feeling the squeeze and get no help from elsewhere.
“Providing support only to those already in receipt of council tax benefit fails to help those who need it most.
“Pensioners who, often having taken the responsible decision to save for their retirement, find
themselves too ‘well off’ to qualify for benefits but are none-the-less struggling to pay their bills.”
Mr Meredith sad he has written to Cllr Colin Mann, the cabinet member responsible for finance on
Caerphilly County Borough Council asking him to take action. The Assembly provides Local
Authorities with a £5,000 grant to cover the cost of administering their chosen scheme.
Cllr Mann, who is also deputy leader, said he had responded to emails from Mr Meredith.
He said: “The reality is that, although the money is welcome, it does not cover the full problem, so all local authorities unfortunately have had to devise a ‘rationing’ system.
“Obviously this didn’t cause Mr Meredith a problem when the council took this action in previous years – there must be an election on.”
I applaud Owen`s position on this `local scandel`.
The Welsh Assembly Government awarded grants to all authorities to help and aid those ratepayers who were finding it difficult to meet, year on year, their council tax commitments, one authority,not a million miles from this computor terminal, decided to do a little creative accounting so that NO PENSIONERS PAYING COUNCIL TAX HAD ANY BENEFIT FROM THE WELSH ASSEMBLY GRANT, it meant that those who had an amount of the grant awarded to them did not see any benefit whatsoever, nothing, the effect of what they did with the money was to offset it against those pensioners who didnt pay council tax in any event, and they were then able to `trouser` the Welsh Assembly Grant in totality.
No-one can find one pensioner up and down this borough who recieved a benefit from this money, it is a class case of creative accounting of the nifftiest sort..
Good one Owen for raising this issue, I would like to vote for you if you garentee to continue to raise issue which other politicains shy away from, and, but only when the sun melts rock, Bodies in graves up and down the valley would be turning to such an extent if the constituency returned a Conservative,that none of us would get any more sleep.So, I dont think that will happen. But it is refreshing to see this sort of campaigning for the citizens of the borough.
Unfortunatly nothing will come of it.
Nice enough person – he will one day be an MP, but not this year – this year Ron v Jeff
Caerphilly a Tory constituency? Perhaps when hell freezes over.