Agenda item

Report No: OAS/SE/17/028

Councillor Margaret Marks declared a non-pecuniary interest in her capacity as a landlord and remained in the meeting.

[Councillor Peter Thompson left the meeting at 5.28pm during the consideration of this item.

Councillors Frank Warby and Patricia Warby left the meeting at 5.38pm during the consideration]

Prior to the report being presented, Councillor Ian Houlder, Cabinet Member for Resources and Performance introduce the item and Jo Andrews and Paul Corney from the Anglia Revenues Partnership.

Report No: OAS/SE/17/028 was produced by the management team at Anglia Revenues Partnership (ARP), following a request from the Committee, which explained the processes they followed to recover debt.  Debt recovery was identified as a matter the Committee wanted to explore further as effective collection of revenue due to the Council was essential for the Council’s finances, as Councillors were asked to approve certain debts to be written off. 

The report and supporting PowerPoint presentation provided a review of the processes that ARP followed to recover debts; which included a summary of performance in this area; the collection process; enforcement; housing benefits overpayments; support provided and a case study illustrating the sometimes lengthy and time consuming recovery of a debt.

Attached at Appendix 1 to the report was a flowchart of the debt recovery process.

The Committee considered the contents of the report and presentation and reviewed in detail the processes that ARP followed in recovering debt.  Discussions were held on fraud overpayments and how this would be collected when Universal Credit was introduced; the reminder process from first reminder to court summons; and whether ARP held a definitive list of property owners/landlords;

In particular discussions were held on the Council Tax instalment process and suggested that ARP could be more proactive in advertising that payments could be made over 12 months, rather than the statutory 10 months.  In response Jo Andrews advised that ARP could look at publicising more the option of payments being spread over 12 months.

The Chairman of the Committee advised that in June 2015, one of the recommendations from the Committee was for ARP to send out how to access debt advice and counselling when sending out the first reminder for non-payment of Council Tax and non-domestic rates.  It was noted that emails and texts were sent but felt that people responded better when reminders were sent in writing.  In response Jo Andrews advised that information on how to access debt advice was provided on the back of debt reminders.

In response to question raised regarding tenants living in houses of multiple occupation (HMO), it was the landlord who was legally liable for paying the council tax, and ARP had no relationship with the individual tenants living in a HMO property.

With regards to write-offs, ARP agreed to provide members with more detail on the set criteria/reasons used in determining  why decisions were made to write off debts, which in some cases were considerable sums.  However, members were reassured that if debtors reappeared ARP did reopen written-off cases and pursued the collection of the outstanding debt with the debtor. 

On behalf of the Committee the Chairman thanked the representatives from ARP for their informative presentation.

It was then proposed by Councillor Patrick Chung, seconded by Councillor Margaret Marks and with the vote being unanimous, it was

          RECOMMENDED:

That the Anglia Revenues Partnership be asked to make the option of being able to pay Council Tax over a twelve month period more prominent when sending out Council Tax bills.