Two women have succeeded in their judicial review after the High Court found a local authority’s council tax reduction scheme was unlawfully adopted and discriminatory against disabled people and carers receiving certain benefits.

The claimants, referred to as LL and AU, had, until this year, received 100% reduction to their council tax bill. In March, they each received a council tax bill with no reduction because of changes brought in by Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council’s council tax reduction scheme. They sought judicial review of the determination to adopt the scheme, arguing it was invalid as it had not been adopted in full council and contained a design error in that certain income was double counted which, as a result, was discriminatory.

Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council argued the scheme was lawfully adopted and there was no error in the scheme itself but in the software used to calculate figures under the scheme.

Finding the council’s decision to adopt the scheme was unlawful, His Honour Judge Pearce, sitting in Manchester Civil Justice Centre (pictured), said: ‘None of the material produced by the council shows that the full council…was asked to approve the scheme, nor that it in fact did so. Every outward manifestation of this decision-making process is that it was taken by the executive committee rather than the full council.’

The double counting flaw ‘clearly lies in the scheme itself’, the judge said in LL and AU v Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council, adding that a ‘significant number of people’ were affected by the flaw which ‘is readily apparent to anyone reading the scheme who was reasonably knowledgeable as to how the payment of Universal Credit is calculated’.

He added: ‘If one took the computer software out of the equation, and carried out the calculation of entitlement with pen and paper, LL would still not qualify for full council tax relief.

‘The defendant’s argument that the flaw lies in the software is indeed disproved by the circumstances of LL, but also is contrary to the express words of the scheme. No other reading of those words has been put forward that would remove the double counting flaw from the entitlement of relief.’

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The judgment said the scheme amounted to discrimination under section 15 of the Equality Act 2010, as it treated LL, who has the protected characteristic of disability, ‘differently (in an unfavourable way) on account of something arising from that disability, namely the receipt of a particular benefit’.

AU, a full-time carer for her daughter, was also found to have been discriminated against under Section 19A of the Equality Act.

The judge said: ‘The disadvantage she suffers (the loss of full council tax reduction) is a disadvantage that a disabled person might suffer because of the application of a provision, the scheme, to that disabled person. AU suffers substantially the same disadvantage (loss of the relief) because the provision applies to her as well, even though she does not share the protected characteristic.’

The judge quashed the scheme and granted declaratory relief.

Carolin Ott, senior associate at Leigh Day who represented the claimants, said: ‘This is a hugely important victory for our clients and for other Trafford residents who were wrongly deprived of support.

‘Local authorities should protect their most vulnerable residents, and this judgment makes clear that Trafford Council failed to do so. The council must go back to the drawing board and ensure that a lawful and fair scheme is put in place.’