Just when I thought we weren’t going to have a seasonal story this year. Westminster Council have ridden to the rescue.
A new proposal, announced by the eminently sane and reasonable Councillor Phillipa Roe, is that from April 2013, Westminster are to maintain a naughty and nice list and to use it for awarding or withholding Council Tax Benefit.
we believe that potentially linking council tax benefit to certain levels of behaviour is a sensible and fair way forward that rewards those that play an active part in their community whilst cracking down on those that misbehave or break the law
Yes, they’ll know if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.
Quite where the funds to maintain such a list would come from is not clear. One suspects funding limitations would militate against checking it twice. No pouting now!
Westminster Council will have to conduct routine CRB checks on benefit claimants. How much would that cost?
Given that they propose not just criminal but other ‘misbehaviour’ should be taken into account, event the CRB checks wouldn’t be sufficient!