This piece first appeared in Saga Magazine in January 1996
The text here may not be identical to the published text

COUNCILS START TO CRUMBLE

First campaign results

Last month's piece on the war pension robbers has brought a huge response. The first and most important development is that the Department of Social Security has asked the Royal British Legion to estimate how much it would cost to ignore war pensions completely, throughout the country when entitlement to council tax benefit and housing benefit is worked out. That would put all councils into the 'good' category and remove the dilemma which councils face in deciding whether to spend the money to treat war pensioners fairly.

The list which Saga Magazine drew up of every council in the country has been accepted as the definitive word on what councils do. It has been welcomed by both the Royal British Legion and by Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes who is campaigning to get Parliament to pass a Bill to end the shame of some councils taking money from war veterans to help balance their budget. He has submitted out list to the Department of Social Security to help them with their calculations of the cost.

Some councils are already showing signs of changing their policy.

Dover in Kent voted to ignore war pensions in full from [April 1996]. Previously they had only ignored the first £20 a week of the pension. The council estimates the cost at £xx,000 a year.
The new unitary authority in York will consider a proposal to ignore war pensions in full early in 1996. The recommendation from its officers is - go for it! The cost is estimated at £xx,000.
The new unitary authority of Bristol decided to think again about its policy after a major demonstration outside the Council House by Royal British Legion president Graham Downing and a delegation of local members in full regalia. They will be debating the matter once more in the new year.

Thirteen councils on our list just fell from the 'good' to the 'bad'. They all said that they did ignore all the basic war disablement pension but they were unable to ignore various extra amounts that are sometimes paid such as Age Allowance or Unemployability Supplement. One council, Breckland in Norfolk, claimed that the law which allowed them to ignore the basic war disablement pension did not extend to allowing it to ignore these extras. Not true. We checked with the Department of Social Security which has now confirmed that councils can ignore any part of a war pension when calculating income for housing benefit or council tax benefit.

Ted Maddison, who we featured last month, has now been taken to court for the twelfth time. He told Saga Magazine

"I went before the magistrates and said 'there's no goods, and there's no money so you either go ahead and jail me or back off.' According to Ted the magistrates did the latter, saying they were forced to order him to pay the money - which he will not do - but making the council pay its costs and making no order to jail Ted who concluded "I think they‘re getting very very worried. Something's got to crack,"

New readers start here
Last month Saga Magazine revealed that more than 100 local councils treated war veterans and their widows pretty shabbily. When these councils assessed the help they would give with council tax or rent they counted war pensions as income. This meant that veterans often got litle or no help with their council tax or rent. Other councils, the great majority, did not behave like this. They ignored war pensions completely when working out entitlement to help. So that veterans in their area often had their full council tax paid and kept all their war pension as well. We divided councils into the good, which ignored war pensions. The bad, who did more than they had to but still counted some war pension for some people; and the ugly which counted almost the whole pension. By law they have to ignore £10 and that is all they did.

January 1996

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