Taxi driver says he won't pay council tax bill so he can feed his children over Easter holidays

Taxi driver David McCarthy’s comments come after he discovered supermarket vouchers are not being dished out to low-income families in Middlesbrough during the school break.

Families across Teesside are increasingly feeling the pinch as energy and council tax bills rise and petrol prices remain high.

A Middlesbrough Council spokesperson said that the government cash which paid for the scheme stopped on March 31.

Although the spokesperson added that a decision has been taken by the Government to extend the scheme, the local authority is still waiting on further clarification about eligibility. This means that the vouchers won’t be in place for the Easter holidays.

David, 46, said: “This will have a terrible impact on families especially when they’ll have been expecting to receive them like I was. I’m a single working dad of two young girls and really struggling to manage especially with the cost of living crisis with everything going up like the gas and electric, council tax, food prices, fuel prices, basically, everything has gone up.

“I seriously couldn’t tell you anything that hasn’t gone up apart from people’s incomes to match these rises.” Explaining his choice not to pay his council tax bill this month, David said that he was choosing for his children to have both food and heating instead.

He added: “I’ve taken the choice not to pay my council tax and chose to spend that money feeding my kids over these holidays.

"I know Middlesbrough Council will send me a lovely nasty letter out for failing to pay my council tax but they’ve failed to provide a much-needed lifeline to quite a lot of people in our area at the time of the worst cost of living crisis I’ve ever known in my lifetime.

“A time when it’s literally heat or eat for many, for my children, I am choosing for them to have both while they’re off.” David raised this with Middlesbrough mayor Andy Preston on Twitter and was told that “huge efforts” were made to help people and he was urged to get in touch if he was facing hardship.

When it comes to local authorities handing out the vouchers it’s a mixed picture across the country as the government left it to councils to decide whether they would continue the scheme.

or the Easter break, eligible families in Kirklees in West Yorkshire can claim £30 worth of vouchers, Camden Council has capped theirs at £15 and Norfolk County Council has scrapped them altogether.

In response, a Middlesbrough Council spokesperson said: “This funding from the Department for Work and Pensions was part of a covid-19 support scheme that closed at the end of March.

“Central government has recently announced that the scheme is to be extended, and the council is awaiting further clarification on the eligibility criteria. An announcement will be made as soon as we’re in a position to do so.”

During the spring statement, it was announced that there would be £500m of new cash for the Household Support Fund. The grant has already provided £500m to support families across the country with the cost of living since October 2021. Middlesbrough Council has previously used some of its share to provide supermarket vouchers.