Explanatory note

Under paragraph 6A of Schedule 1 to the Local Government Finance Act 1988 a person is exempt from the personal community charge if he is aged under 20, he is undertaking a qualifying course of education, and the course is not undertaken in consequence of an office or employment held by him.

Regulation 2 of these Regulations provides relevant definitions, and regulation 3 prescribes, by reference to those definitions, the condition which must be fulfilled by a person in order that he may be treated as undertaking a qualifying course. To meet that condition the person must be undertaking a course with an education establishment which normally requires (or, so far as appropriate, when taken together with other courses undertaken by him at the establishment normally requires) an average of at least 12 hours per week relevant tuition, practical work or supervised study and which is not undertaken under certain employment training schemes. A course will only count for this purpose if it is not a course of higher education, it is undertaken principally between 8.00 a.m. and5.30 p.m., it subsists for more than 3 months, and tuition under it is received principally otherwise than through correspondence.

Regulation 4 enables a community charges registration officer to request a person who is a certification officer under the Personal Community Charge (Students) Regulations 1989 to supply him with information as to whether on any day a person is undertaking a qualifying course.