Posted 01.09.16
Southwark Council has written to ask the Government to use its own tax office to pick up the bureaucracy that Pay to Stay will generate.
Pay to Stay was introduced in the Housing and Planning Act, asking local authorities to means test council tenants.
Those earning over £40,000 in London will be required to pay more council rent. But a £40,000 household income in London is the equivalent of a couple earning the minimum wage and working full time and the council values working households as they help create vibrant and sustainable communities.
Southwark Council said:
"The immense extra administration authorities such as Southwark Council could be required to undertake would be costly, time consuming and in direct contradiction to the Government's own guidance in the New Burdens Doctrine.
"The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) states in its own guidance that - Successive governments have sought to keep the pressure on council tax bills to a minimum through some form of 'new burdens doctrine'.
"This requires all Whitehall departments to justify why new duties, powers, targets and other bureaucratic burdens should be placed on local authorities, as well as how much these policies and initiatives will cost and where the money will come from to pay for them."
Furthermore, with a larger than average population of self-employed people in the Borough (around 26,000 people), the new Pay to Stay legislation will make it almost impossible to ascertain some people's annual or weekly income as it fluctuates so much, and taxable income is filed to HMRC a year behind the current year.
