Question
Our care leavers face significant challenges, currently exacerbated by Covid-19. When they move into their own accommodation and manage their own budget they can often find themselves struggling to cope with personal finances.
Since 2018, Council has been legally obliged to support care leavers to the age of 25. As corporate parents for these care leavers we should all be ensuring they have the same chances as we would want for our own children. Yet, in Wokingham, these same care leavers currently have to pay Council Tax as soon as they turn 21, on top of learning how to manage a household, job, studies and other bills, often without the support of family or other networks.
We know that Council Tax debt can be particularly daunting for care leavers, and can escalate quickly. Contrast this with young people who are not care leavers, who will often have parents to support them, and even house them, so they have no Council Tax to pay.
The cost of exemption is not material for this Council. So, when will Wokingham do the right thing, as many other Councils have done, and make care leavers exempt from paying Council Tax until they turn 25?
Minutes:
Our care leavers face significant challenges, currently exacerbated by Covid-19. When they move into their own accommodation and manage their own budget they can often find themselves struggling to cope with personal finances.
Since 2018, Council has been legally obliged to support care leavers to the age of 25. As corporate parents for these care leavers we should all be ensuring they have the same chances as we would want for our own children. Yet, in Wokingham, these same care leavers currently have to pay Council Tax as soon as they turn 21, on top of learning how to manage a household, job, studies and other bills, often without the support of family or other networks.
We know that Council Tax debt can be particularly daunting for care leavers, and can escalate quickly. Contrast this with young people who are not care leavers, who will often have parents to support them, and even house them, so they have no Council Tax to pay.
The cost of exemption is not material for this Council. So, when will Wokingham do the right thing, as many other Councils have done, and make care leavers exempt from paying Council Tax until they turn 25?
Answer
As you will be aware, the Council finds itself in extremely challenging financial circumstances as a result of Covid 19. We already have an in year overspend of approximately £4million and we have considerable financial impact flowing into next year in relation to Covid 19 alone. These include valuable lost income that we need to fund services and higher costs of care arising from isolation and lockdown. Indeed, as I am sure you are aware Councils up and down the country, are having to make some very stark choices.
We will of course continue with our approach during such challenging times of targeting our very limited resources into the areas of most need and in delivering the key priority investments for our community.
On 29th March 2018, it was agreed at the Executive meeting that all Wokingham care leavers up to the age of 21, years would be exempt from Council Tax. Furthermore, I am aware that the Corporate Parenting Board has undertaken work to explore the possibility of extending that exemption up to the age of 25. This proposal would obviously come at a cost and would have to be considered along with all other competing priorities across the Council, in arriving at another balanced budget. This process of setting up next year’s MTFP is of course set in a stark financial context as I described earlier. It would therefore be irresponsible of me to make any commitments at this stage.
Supplementary Question:
I obviously understand the impact on the Council’s finances at the moment, but the values involved are actually virtually immaterial. It is actually quite a small cohort, but obviously, for those individuals it can be completely life changing. I do not know why we cannot just do the right thing and just do it now. Why is that? Why cannot we just do it now?
Supplementary Answer:
I understand where you are coming from and of course, all the councillors have very serious corporate parenting responsibilities. It is at the front of all our minds, but I think particularly with the financial situation that we are in right now, which is unique, we need to be very disciplined with the finances, make sure we are going through the same robust budgeting process that we always do. Now is not the time to be messing around with that to be honest.