‘It’s not on’: Whitstable rages against extra £400 for second-home owners’ fuel bills

5 comments
  1. Seems to be rather simplistic. Would both residences be in use simultaneously by the owners, as opposed to just one, with the other occupied by their clients?

  2. Hard to counter this. If they pay the second home taxes and council tax then this payment is an inflationary counter. If you do it on tax on income then you hit those on low or no wages. You could reduce the price at the meter but that again won’t target bands of houses. You could make payments to only one bank account but that would mean checking council to council in case the one is in two councils.

    Our council can’t figure out so far this month how to simply make a credit bot for the rebate to those not on DD let alone do anything more fact with spreadsheets.

  3. The thing I would be interested in knowing, what would the cost difference be. The government are renowned for their inefficiencies, so I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if it was actually cheaper to just tack on £400 to everyone than to wrestle with whatever ancient accounting software they use.

  4. It would probably cost more than it saves trying to exclude 2nd homes. Means testing benefits is extremely expensive.

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