Council Tax Reduction in Scotland: 2023-2024

1. Introduction

The CTR scheme provides lower income households in Scotland with a reduction in their Council Tax liability. The reduction can be any proportion of the liability, up to and including 100 per cent (i.e. the household has their Council Tax liability reduced to zero and pays no Council Tax).

CTR data is reported from CTR extracts provided by local authorities on a monthly basis. This publication provides the data on the number of CTR recipients and the weekly income forgone from April 2023 to March 2024. It also makes references to the previously published March 2023 statistics. The publication also includes detailed analysis of additional characteristics and weekly awards for March 2024 CTR data and therefore supplements the monthly release for the data period up to March 2024 published on 14 May 2024.

Since its introduction, entitlement to CTR in Scotland has broadly replicated, as far as possible, previous entitlement to Council Tax Benefit (the previous UK-wide benefit abolished in 2013). 

The 2017-18 and 2018-19 Local Government Finance settlements included agreement between the Scottish Government and local government for locally determined Council Tax increases to be capped at 3 per cent in cash terms. In 2019-20 and 2020-21 they were capped at 3 per cent in real terms, which was 4.79 per cent (in 2019-20) and 4.84 per cent (in 2020-21) in cash terms. In 2021-22, Council Tax rates were frozen. In 2022-23, the majority of local authorities increased their CT rates by around three percent. Shetland froze their rate at 2021-22 levels. In 2023-24, local authorities increased their CT rates by between four and ten percent.  

1.1 How CTR awards are calculated

Entitlement to CTR and the amount awarded is based on the characteristics and income of the applicant and their household. Figure 3 demonstrates a CTR calculation. Please note that this is a simplified version and does not include some additional features of the scheme (such as capital rules, non-dependant deductions and the second adult rebate). 

Figure 3: Process for calculating CTR awards