Members to give notice of any interest and the nature of that interest relating to any item on the agenda in accordance with the adopted Code of Conduct.

No declarations were made by Executive Members.

To consider a report of the Executive Member for Finance and Director of Finance.

The Executive Member for Finance and Director of Finance submitted a report seeking approval for the Executive to recommend to Council the adoption of the Council Tax Support (CTS) scheme currently in operation, with a number of changes, as detailed in the report, for 2014/15.

RESOLVED: That Council be recommended to adopt the Council Tax Support (CTS) scheme currently in operation, with the four changes detailed below for 2014/15:

1) The applicable amounts are uprated by 1% to keep them in line with inflationary increases to Housing Benefit and other welfare benefits (appendix 1 to the report).

2) That the Non-dependant deductions are frozen at their current rate (appendix 2 to the report).

3) That the remaining funding allocated to the £50k discretionary fund (as a one off in year 1) is rolled over into 2014/15. This is estimated to be between £30K and £40k by the end of the year.

4) That the temporary extra steps built into the Council Tax recovery process for residents on CTS are removed and brought into line with existing processes.