Bassetlaw District Council announce rollout date of £150 council tax rebate

Bassetlaw District Council has announced that it will begin processing the £150 rebates by Friday, May 13 to residents who pay their council tax by direct debit – which make up around 70 per cent of Bassetlaw households.

The council tax rebate comes as part of government’s response to rising energy costs and is being made to those living in council tax bands A-D, which accounts for approximately 90 per cent of households within the Bassetlaw District.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak first announced in February that the rebate would be paid ‘in April’.

However, BBC Radio 4’s Money Box programme has found that many councils, from Croydon to Lancaster, have not yet begun the rebate process.

This is while all local authorities, including Bassetlaw, have had to install new software on their systems, as well as carry out necessary fraud checks.

For those who do not pay by direct debit, residents will receive a letter with instructions on how to claim the rebate, in addition to a unique verification code for security purposes.

Those residents will then be asked to visit the council’s website to provide your details and your unique verification code, in addition to confirming other security questions.

However, those without access to the internet will be able to contact Bassetlaw’s council tax team over the phone to provide your details.

Residents are asked to wait until they have received their letter and unique verification code before contacting the team.

The Council will not contact you directly to ask for your bank details. Please be alert to scams.

David Hill, director of corporate resources, said: “I’d like to thank Bassetlaw residents for their patience so far and apologise for the short delay in processing the Government’s rebate.

"We appreciated that this payment is very important and people are keen to receive their £150.

"We’d like to reassure everyone that we are doing all we can to ensure that the payments are made as quickly as possible in a safe and secure way.

“As we will be paying out more than £7 million in rebates to Bassetlaw residents, we want to ensure that this process is right first time.

"In order to prevent fraud or errors in payment, we are thoroughly testing the payment system to avoid some of the difficulties that other local authorities have experienced so far.

“If you already pay by Direct Debit, the payment process should be swift and straight forward and we aim to start making payments to Bassetlaw residents by the end of next week.

"For residents who pay by other means, or where the circumstances may be a little more complex, we will process these as quickly as possible.”

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