My client has indefinite leave to remain in Britain and recieves ibJSA. Her husband has no recourse to public funds and so her ibJSA includes nothing for him. She gets HB which is paid at the maximum amount on the basis of her ibJSA entitlement and so her award includes nothing 'extra' for her husband that would lead to him being deemed to be in receipt of public funds. But her CTB is paid at the rate she would get if she were a single claimant entitled to a 25% single person discount. ie nothing is being paid in respect of her husband, but I can't find anything to say that she can be paid the amount she would be entitled to if he wasn't living with her. Can anyone enlighten me?

Either I'm not quite getting your enquiry or I am not quite getting what the local authority are doing in this case.

The situation as I understand it is that there is no discount due in this case. Two adults live in this property as their sole or main residence and neither of them fall into a category whereby they could be disregarded for discount purposes. However this makes no material difference to your client because she is receiving IBJSA which means a full rebate on the full council tax due on the property. In otherwords there is no council tax due from your client (or her partner) for as long as IBJSA remains in payment.

And as far as I know, a council tax discount does not constitute "public funds" anyway.

I agree with Andy. As far as I know there's no means for the benefit section to artificially reduce the council tax liability in this way.

There is something strange here.

HB and CTB require that both the claimant and partner provide the Council with a national insurance number or to have applied for one and provided the needed evidence.

If either of the couple is unable to do this then no HB or CTB is payable to either.

If they both proviode the NINO then the claim is assessed in the same way as any other claim from a member of a couple. Unlike other social security benefits there is no bases upon which HB and/or CTB will be assessed ignoring the partner if they live with the claimant.

Ok....after some thought I think I can see the LA's "logic".

They are paying her CTB on the basis of 75% CT liability because the person living with her (so she doesn't get the discount) is a person with no recourse. And if they paid CTB on the gross amount they would then effectively be "giving something" to a person wth no recourse?

They are still wrong though. As Tony says, there is no legal basis for it. Secondly your client has an inescapable CT liability based on at least two adults in the dwelling (immigration status is irrelevant). And in any case there is no basis on which they can demand payment of the 25% they have excluded from her CTB. The relationship between this sum and your client's husband is way too tenuous to amount to claim by him on public funds.