Council tax arrears - Freedom of information requests

Council tax arrears

400

22/04/2022

FOI

For the period 2018/19 -2021/22 by year, and, if possible, for households containing families with children specifically (If it is not possible to break the data down by families with children then please could you provide the following information for all households):1. How many households in total were in Council Tax arrears? How many households in total were there in your local authority?2. How many households in Council Tax arrears became subject to a Summary Warrant?3. How many households in Council Tax arrears became subject to a Charge for Payment?
4. How many cases of Council Tax arrears had third party deductions applied?
5. How many households in Council Tax arrears became subject to a bank arrestment?
6. How many households in Council Tax arrears became subject to an earnings arrestment?
7. How many cases of Council Tax arrears were referred to sheriff's officers?
a. What was the value of the Council Tax arrears referred to sheriff's officers?
b. What was the value of the arrears recovered?
c. What were the costs of the sheriff's officers action (including costs faced by households and costs faced by the council)?

1. Unfortunately, we are unable to identify this information by means of reporting as our software reports the current position of accounts rather than historic information. For example, if a person had an outstanding balance in 2018/19 and this has since been paid, our reporting system would view the current position rather than the position as at 2018. We would have to manually view the information and documentation held for each account and for each financial year to collate the information requested. The cost of investigating this would exceed the prescribed limits therefore this part of your request is refused under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act Scotland 2002.
For the second part of your question, I can confirm that we have 59,480 domestic properties on our Council Tax database as at 14 June 2022.

2. Unfortunately, we are unable to identify this information by means of reporting as our software reports the current position of accounts rather than historic information. In addition, one household could potentially have multiple Summary Warrants for different liabilities within each financial year. I would need to manually check 24 Summary Warrant applications for each financial year and within those, identify accounts where more than one Summary Warrant has been granted per household and then collate the figures. As this would be several thousand account records, the cost of investigating this would exceed the prescribed limits therefore this part of your request is refused under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act Scotland 2002.

3, 5 and 6. We do not hold this information as recovery action is carried out by Sheriff Offices and therefore we give notice under Section 17 (1) (b) of the Freedom of Information Act 2002.

4. We do not specifically record this information and again, this would need to be checked manually. I would need to check every account where a 3rd party deduction application has been made and manually check if 3rd party payments have been credited to the account over the last 3 years. The cost of investigating this would exceed the prescribed limits therefore this part of your request is refused under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act Scotland 2002.

7. a. Similar to question 2, we are unable to identify this information by means of reporting as our software reports the current position of accounts rather than historic information. We produce 4 separate files per day that are submitted to our Sheriff Officers and we would need to manually collate these to determine how many accounts have been referred them and the original value of the arrears. As this would be several thousand account records over 4 years, the cost of investigating this would exceed the prescribed limits therefore this part of your request is refused under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act Scotland 2002.
b.
2018/19 £ 1,701,990.16
2019/20 £ 1,677,124.11
2020/21 £ 1,202,486.74
2021/22 £ 1,743,094.71
For clarity, the above payments include liability for Water and Waste Water charges billed alongside Council Tax.
c. I am unable to provide the information requested in relation to our cost for using Sheriff Officer services as this information is commercially sensitive and therefore exempt as per Section 33 of The Freedom of Information Act (Scotland) 2002.
We do not hold this information relating to the cost of Sheriff Officer services faced by householders as recovery action is carried out by Sheriff Officers and we give notice under Section 17 (1) (b) of the Freedom of Information Act 2002.