Councils fix decade-old carer discount website errors

Millions of unpaid carers in England and Wales may have missed council tax discounts worth hundreds of pounds annually after local authorities listed incorrect eligibility rules on their websites for over a decade, an investigation has found.

MoneySavingExpert's "Councils that couldn't care less" probe, published in January 2026, examined online information from more than 200 of the 318 councils responsible for council tax billing. It identified 69 with incomplete or inaccurate criteria for the live-in carer discount and another 80 lacking readily accessible details on qualifying benefits. The errors stemmed from councils failing to update their sites following 2013 reforms that expanded eligibility to include lower or middle rates of certain disability benefits, such as the standard and enhanced daily living components of Personal Independence Payment, the middle rate care component of Disability Living Allowance, the lower rate of Attendance Allowance and any amount of Armed Forces Independence Payment.

The discount disregards the carer from the household count for council tax purposes. In a home with just the carer and the person receiving care, this triggers a 25 percent...