By  Ed Sheridan, Local Democracy Reporter  |  September 18, 2018 Hard Times: Campaigners clash with council over council tax support. Photograph: Marco Verch. A cross-party campaign is calling on Hackney Council to walk back a recent cut to tax relief and instead provide full support to the borough’s poorest residents. The Town Hall  came under heavy fire  from anti-poverty charity Zacchaeus 2000 Trust (Z2K) in September last year after it announced plans to increase the amount of council tax paid by working age residents in financial hardship. In order to offset government cuts, the council  made the decision earlier this year to go ahead with changes to its Council Tax Reduction Scheme (CTRS), increasing the amount paid by working age claimants from 15 to 17 per cent. The No Poll Tax 2 campaign has now started a  petition  calling on the local authority to think again and provide 100 per cent support through...

‘I have not been able to pay my council tax for last four years. Bailiffs have lied to me to get money from me. I still can’t afford it!’  says Joanna Robinson on Money Matters show on East London Radio in March 2018.   During the period 2016-17, bailiffs were used by councils on nearly 1.5 million occasions in order to attempt recovery of council tax arrears. As in Joanna's case, residents were summoned to court for being too poor to pay - accruing court costs, subjected to the ignominy and anxiety having to face enforcement agents, and already too poor to pay, further indebtedness.   As I hear the horror stories of bailiff’s knocking on debtors’ doors under the new Council Tax Reduction Scheme (CTRS), I am beginning to worry that the Scheme is really just a Poll Tax rehash. I was too young to remember what the Poll Tax was when it was first introduced in the late 1980s. My parents never spoke about it. In my work I started to notice ...

Silence can be a deadly killer for women of domestic abuse and instead of just hindering their recovery it could lead to their fatality.  According to the Office of National Statistics (2015), two women are killed every week in England and Wales by a current or former partner in a relationship.   The definition of domestic abuse has been expanded in recent times by legislation: an incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening, degrading and violent behaviour, including sexual violence. Julia Oviedo, a victim and survivor of domestic abuse, shared her personal experience on  ‘In Conversation with Ripon Ray…the Community Money Matters Show’  on Betar Bangla Radio. It may seem just another story to many listeners but for an individual to talk about such a personal experience requires bravery, confidence and the will to encourage other victims to come forward and share their experiences.   In her case, it was physic...