SOUTH Lakeland District Council (SLDC) has said it is working to pay residents the £150 energy rebate ‘as soon as possible’.

In February, the government announced a package of support to help households with the rising costs of energy bills. 

This included the £150 non-repayable rebate for households in England in council tax bands A – D, known as the Council Tax Energy Rebate Scheme.

In addition, discretionary funding has been made available for local authorities to support households who are in need but are not eligible for the main Council Tax Energy Rebate under a locally determined scheme.

South Lakeland District Council has been allocated £5,193,450 for the main scheme payments and £191,250 for the discretionary scheme.

The council’s discretionary scheme is currently being approved and details will be published on its website in ‘due course’.

The Government’s expectation is that councils will administer the support as soon as possible after April 1 and before September 30 for main scheme payments and as soon as possible after April 1 but before November 30 for discretionary scheme payments.

An SLDC spokesman said the council understood the ‘urgency’ of distributing the funds and said it had recently received the software to enable them to do this.

A spokesperson said: "South Lakeland District Council understands the urgency in administering the Council Tax Energy Rebate Scheme to help residents with their energy bills and the government allocated funds for distribution and required software solution have now been received to enable this.

"SLDC, along with the vast majority of authorities nationally, are reliant upon software enhancements to facilitate payments. We were provided with our software solution the week before last and it is being installed and robustly tested to ensure we can accurately start making payments as soon as we can.

"Payments are planned to start later this month with those taxpayers currently paying their Council Tax by Direct Debit being identified for payment first.

"South Lakeland District Council will contact those taxpayers who pay their Council Tax by other methods, in writing, to outline the process for providing bank details for payment. The council will not call taxpayers for bank details.

"We appreciate residents' patience and can assure all eligible householders that they will receive the payment as soon as possible."