Opinion: Lifting the Two-Child Benefit Cap is a Hollow Victory for Hartlepool's Poorest Families...

Government Lifts the Two-Child Cap, but the reality is Hartlepool Borough Council is keeping Families Poor...

30th November 2025

The headlines have been full of it this week of Rachel Reeves and the Labour government announcing they've finally scrapped the 'cruel' two-child benefit cap in the 2025 Budget – a policy that Labour claims, has kept millions in poverty since 2017.

The government proudly claims this change will lift 450,000 children out of relative poverty by the end of the Parliament. Campaigners are cheering, backbench rebels such as Hartlepool's Labour MP Jonathan Brash feel vindicated, and Keir Starmer says it's proof Labour is serious about tackling child poverty. But here in Hartlepool, its claimed many won't be popping the champagne at the news. While Westminster pats itself on the back for putting a few extra pounds a week into the pockets of larger families, thousands of households in Hartlepool are being absolutely suffocated by council tax debts – debts which are then aggressively chased by none other than Hartlepool Borough itself.

3,302 households have been referred to the Kangaroo Court at Teesside for Council Tax debt recovery, & the numbers show no signs of going down.

The same Labour Party that's supposedly "ending child poverty" nationally is running a local council in Hartlepool that recently announced that it referred a record 3,302 households to bailiffs in 2024/25 alone – a staggering 118% increase in just two years. These aren't tax-dodging millionaires. These are the poorest families in one of the most deprived towns in Britain, already receiving council tax support, yet still hounded relentlessly. Council tax arrears in Hartlepool have more than doubled since 2021/22, rocketing from £2.15 million to a jaw-dropping £4.79 million this year. And what has the council done in response? Slashed write-offs to almost nothing (£28,132 in 2024/25, down from over £111,000 just a few years ago) and sent in the bailiffs faster than ever. Even people on council tax reduction schemes are not protected – you get behind with your payments and you're fair game for enforcement agents who then pile on the fees and remove your goods. This isn't just "robust collection". This is a deliberate policy that's driving families into despair.

Freedom of Information responses now confirm what many of us have known for years: Hartlepool Borough Council has one of the most aggressive council tax recovery operations in the country. The result? Low-income households, already struggling with sky-high energy bills, food poverty and stagnant wages, are being pushed into Debt Relief Orders, Individual Voluntary Arrangements and even bankruptcy – often triggered primarily or entirely by council tax debt according to many debt charities.

Enforcement Action via the use of Debt Collectors & Bailiffs to collect Council tax Debts owed to Hartlepool Borough Council has soared in the last two years.

When your goods are being taken away by bailiffs because you owe to your own local council, an extra £20 or £30 a week from lifting the two-child cap isn't going to save you. That money will simply disappear straight into the black hole of arrears, bailiff fees attachment to benefit orders and court costs before it ever buys a pair of school shoes or puts food on the table. The tragedy is that Hartlepool has some of the highest child poverty rates in the UK – over 40% in parts of the town second only to Middlesbrough. These are exactly the families who have been hammered hardest by the two-child limit. Yet even when the government finally does the right thing nationally, the local Labour council is undoing it with the other hand. Scrapping the two-child cap may lift 450,000 children out of poverty on a spreadsheet in Whitehall, but the reality is that it will barely touch the sides in places such as Hartlepool while Hartlepool Borough Council continues treating council tax arrears like some sort of twisted blood sport. If Labour really wants to end child poverty in towns like Hartlepool, they need to look no further than their own councillors. Stop the bailiff bonanza. Start writing off unsustainable debts for the poorest. Protect vulnerable households properly, not just with meaningless "policies" that are ignored in practice. And fundamentally reform or replace this regressive, punitive council tax system that punishes poverty rather than alleviating it.

Until then, the announcement from Westminster is just cruel window dressing. The real poverty trap in Hartlepool isn't a benefit cap that's now being lifted – it's the debt collectors knocking on doors with the council's blessing.