Issue - meetings

Report FSD17080

At the committee’s meeting on 13 July 2017 Members had requested that the current recovery process for collection of Council Tax debt be presented for discussion at a future meeting. Robert Jones, Katy Luk and Tracey Hollidge from Liberata attended the meeting to assist in responding to queries.

The Authority used a range of recovery methods to collect Council Tax, including bankruptcy and Charging Orders.  In order to initiate bankruptcy proceedings a minimum of £5,000 needed to be owed.  Since 2012, the Council had instructed 189 bankruptcy cases for debts totalling £884,000.  86 of these debts were paid in full prior to bankruptcy being granted and a further 50 once bankruptcy had been granted.  The Council’s policy was that there needed to be an aggregated balance on Council Tax Liability Orders of over £1,000 before an application was made to place a charge on the property.  To date, the Council had applied for Charging Orders on 137 cases covering debts of £585,000.  Of these cases over 40% had settled their debts whilst a further 5% had agreed to a payment arrangement.

An additional table was circulated showing high end recovery referrals to Baker Tilly. A Member commented that there was a financial incentive for Baker Tilley to recommend bankruptcy proceedings. Other Members considered that the number of cases where bankruptcy was recommended was relatively low, and officers confirmed that the final decision lay with the Council rather than Baker Tilly.

A Member commented that there was only a very small drop in recovery cases between the Final Reminder stage and summonses. He also criticised the costs as disproportionate, and suggested that the Council should do more to reduce the number of summonses issued. Officers explained that, unlike some other authorities, Bromley did set minimum value thresholds below which it did not issue summonses. Another Member commented that some very vulnerable people might not be able to respond to warnings, and the Council needed to do more to identify these cases. She suggested involving ward councillors, although there would probably be difficulties with data protection. 

RESOLVED: That the current procedure for collection of Council Tax debt be noted.