How we recover unpaid Council Tax

If your are found to owe us the Council Tax funds, we can ask your employer to deduct the funds from your earnings.

The amount taken from your wage will depend on how much you earn.

The percentage we are allowed to take out of your wage are set by the government.

Any income from overtime work is included in your wage as we take the funds from your net earnings.

If you are on sick pay or your income reduces for some reason, the amount taken will reduce accordingly.

Your employer will keep a record of how much is left to clear your bill and should stop making deductions once the amount is paid in full (your wage slip should tell you how much has been deducted).

If you decide you can or want to pay it off in full, you must contact us so that we can arrange for the order to be stopped.

You will need to let us know if you:

• change jobs- we need to know your new employment details
• are no longer working- you may be eligible for some benefits to help pay your bill

You can contact the Recovery Team on [email protected].

We may apply to the Department of Work and Pensions to deduct funds from your benefits if you receive:

• Universal Credit
• Income Support
• Jobseekers Allowance
• Employment Support Allowance
• Guarantee Pension Credit

Your debt may be passed to one of our nominated enforcement agents to recover on our behalf.

Once it has been handed to the enforcement agents you will need to discuss your debt with them direct.

This action will incur additional statutory fees at each stage of the enforcement process.

Where is more than £1,000 outstanding under liability order(s) and the Council Tax payer has a legal interest in the property, we may apply to the County Court for a charging order on the property.

The effect of a charging order is that if the property or other legal interest is sold, the amount of the charging order is paid out of the proceeds.

In some rare cases we will apply to the County Court for force of sale in order to recover the outstanding debt.

Bankruptcy is essentially a declaration to your creditors that you cannot afford to repay your debt.

If you or your company owe more than £5,000 in Council Tax or Business Rates, and you have been summonsed, we may start bankruptcy or liquidation proceedings against you.

If we take this action, we will pass your account to our solicitors who will send you a statutory demand. A statutory demand gives you 21 days to pay us the full amount.

If you receive a statutory demand, you should contact our solicitors immediately.

If you do not settle the statutory demand, we will present a petition for bankruptcy or liquidation to the County Court.

If we have tried all other options, we may request that the Magistrates issue a summons for you to appear before them to explain why you have not paid your debt and to enquire into your means.

You may be imprisoned for a period (less than 3 months for each debt), if the court finds that you had the means to pay the debt but:

• refused to pay the debt
• were culpably negligent in not paying

The court may decide to postpone the imprisonment upon the payment of an agreed amount until the debt is paid.

The court has the power to remit the debt or part of the debt if it sees fit.