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Council tax enforcement

If you don't pay your council tax we are legally obliged to recover the debt. Stages of recovering council tax are:

Reminder and final notices
Court action - Liability Orders

Reminder or final notices

We will send a reminder notice if you miss an instalment, requesting full payment within 12 days. Part payment of the outstanding amount will not stop further recovery action.

If you bring your account up to date within the 12 days but you later miss a payment within the same financial year you will be issued with a final notice. If your payments are not brought up to date the full balance on your account will become payable and we can take court action to recover the debt.

Court action - Liability Orders

Should court action be necessary a summons will be sent to each liable party on your account and costs will be payable. The cost of a summons is currently £53.

The summons is served at least 14 days before the Court hearing. If the amount including costs, shown on the summons is paid in full before the Court hearing, no further action will be taken and proceedings will be withdrawn.

If you are unable to pay the full amount immediately, you can contact us to discuss an arrangement for payment on the understanding that the application for a Liability Order and additional costs will still proceed. In these cases we will not take any further action if the arrangement is maintained.

If a Liability Order is granted the main ways we can recover the debt are:

Attachment of earnings and benefits

If you are working the Council can instruct your employer to make deductions from your net earnings. The amount we are able to deduct is set by legislation.

Attachment of benefits

If you are claiming Income Support (IS), Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) or Pension Credits we can apply to the Department of Work and Pensions for deductions to be made from your benefits.

Bailiffs

We can instruct bailiffs to remove and dispose of goods in order to recover council tax debt. This action will cause further costs to be added onto the existing debt.

If a payment is received in full after the bailiffs have been sent but before goods are sold the goods should be made available for collection.

Bankruptcy order

Where a debt is greater than £750 the Council can apply to bankrupt an individual.

If the insolvency action is successful the debts outstanding are frozen at the date of the court hearing. Once you have been declared bankrupt no further recovery action can be taken against the debt.

Normal council tax charges will still apply after bankruptcy and new debts will also be subject to recovery action if they aren't paid.

Charging order

If the debt owed to the Council is over £1000 we can apply for a Charging Order.

A Charging Order can be applied for if you are the owner or part-owner of a property.

The Charging Order gives the Council a charge on the property which means once the property is sold and any mortgage paid off, the council tax debt can be claimed from any remaining equity. It may be possible for the Council to enforce the sale of the property.

Even when we take action to enforce payment of the debt, we will still try to help you if we feel you may not be claiming all the benefits you are entitled to.