Decision details

On 28 June 2022 Guildford Borough Council adopted a Discretionary Energy Rebate Scheme with two strands of entitlement. Funds remain so a third strand of payments will be made to residents in properties banded A to D and in receipt of pension age LCTS. Residents must be resident at the point of payment. We will write to all recipients.

The government gave us £235,500 to provide discretionary energy support before 30 November 2022. Funds remain and we still have time to help more residents. Residents in receipt of pension age LCTS are on low fixed incomes. We expect to pay £80 to each household.

In common with other billing authorities we have experienced low numbers applying for direct mandatory payments, and for strand 2 discretionary payments. Given the tight timescale any strand 3 discretionary scheme must avoid an application process. This means that we must be able to identify the recipients from our existing records. It also needs to pay a useful sum of money, and take account of the cost of administration. We considered paying all LCTS recipients but this reduced the payment and increased administration substantially.

We considered returning the remaining funds to the government, however their expectation is that they are distributed locally.