We have been made aware of calls being made by someone pretending to be Gravesham Borough Council asking for bank details in relation to energy payments.

We will never ask for your bank details over the phone.

We are receiving lots of enquiries about the £150 rebate for eligible households in Council Tax bands A-D.

If you pay your Council Tax by Direct Debit, you do not need to do anything. You will be paid the money into you account automatically. Thank you if you have recently set up your Direct Debit, as this helps us process payments faster.

Please note we require a valid direct debit in place with at least one successful payment taken. To prevent any issues processing the rebate payment, we advise you not to cancel your direct debit. This will cause issues for us delays in verifying accounts and may result in your £150 payment taking longer.

If you do not pay by direct debit, we will soon be writing to you. This letter will provide a secure way for you to share your bank details with us so we can make payment.

Please bear with us while we do. We'll update this page with more information when we have it.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the rebate, you must meet the following conditions on 1 April 2022:

  • the property is in council tax bands A to D (or the property is a band E property that has a disabled person’s reduction applied, effectively reducing it to a band D)
  • the property is your sole or main residence
  • it's a property for which council tax is chargeable or it's exempt under the following classes:
    • class N - occupied solely by full-time students
    • class S - occupied solely by people under the age of 18
    • class U - occupied solely by those with a severe mental impairment
    • class W - an annexe occupied by a dependant relative
  • those who are liable to pay the council tax (or would be if the property was not exempt) are not a local council, a corporate body or other body such as a housing association, the government or governmental body.

Households that do not pay council tax because of council tax reduction will still be eligible for the payment.

Direct Debit

If you pay by Direct Debit we’ll be able to make your payment more quickly. Find out how to pay your council tax by Direct Debit.

We will not make payment until we have collected at least one council tax instalment by Direct Debit.

Getting the £150 payment

We have currently paid almost £4.6 million to more than 30,000 Gravesham residents.

If you are eligible and you did not apply for the rebate by 9 September 2022 or we were unable to transfer payment to your bank account, it will be credited to your Council Tax account by 30 September 2022. You will receive a bill with revised instalments.

Discretionary scheme

A Discretionary Council Tax Rebate (Energy Payment) scheme has been finalised and the scheme closed on 30 November 2022. Consequently, payments were automatically credited to the Council Tax account or paid directly to a household where they had their sole or main residence in a dwelling on 1 April 2022 and the following conditions were met at that time:

  1. A single one-off payment of £181.60 will be awarded to
    • any household who resides in a dwelling with a Council Tax band E to H and was in receipt of Council Tax Reduction OR
    • any household who resides in a dwelling with a Council Tax band F to H and was in receipt of a reduction under the Council Tax (Reductions for Disabilities) Regulations 1992 (Disabled Banding Reduction) OR
    • any household who resides in a dwelling with a Council Tax band E to H and was in receipt of Council Tax exemption Class U (severely mentally impaired) or a discount disregard in respect of a severely mentally impaired person;
  2.  A single top-up payment of £31.60 (i.e., in addition to the £150 main council tax rebate previously paid/credited between May 2022 and September 2022) will be awarded to: 
    • any household who resides in a dwelling with a Council Tax band A to D and was in receipt of Council Tax Reduction OR
    • any household who resides in a dwelling with a Council Tax band A to E and was in receipt of a reduction under the Council Tax (Reductions for Disabilities) Regulations 1992 (Disabled Banding Reduction) OR
    • any household who resides in a dwelling with a Council Tax band A to D and was in receipt of Council Tax exemption Class U (severely mentally impaired) or a discount disregard in respect of a severely mentally impaired person;

Frequently asked questions