Are council tax demands too heavy-handed?

First Published by: Confused.com

Council tax is the only household bill that can land you in prison for non-payment. Yet despite this threat, plenty of us still pay it late.

Some 36 per cent of householders who admitted to tardy bill behaviour said council tax was the one they most often fell behind with, according to a survey of the nation’s spending habits by discount website MyVoucherCodes.

This is followed by mobile phone (31 per cent), gas and electricity (29 per cent), rent/mortgage (17 per cent) and TV/phone/broadband (13 per cent).

Lack of funds

In what seems to be a sign of the times, the poll of 1,357 people found that the majority of those paying bills late simply did not have the money.

Mark Pearson, chairman of MyVoucherCodes, said: “I was quite surprised that council tax was the bill most commonly paid late by Brits, because that’s really the one that can get you in the most bother.

Law and order:

Not sure how serious the council are with threats of imprisonment over missed bill payments? Well, here’s my story, where I was recently at the receiving end of a Council Tax demand.

I missed a payment through simple forgetfulness (I’d recently moved, set up direct debits for all my bills but somehow forgot to do so for Council Tax), and around one month later I received a letter not just demanding payment, but also threatening to withdraw my right to pay in instalments if I failed to clear the arrears within seven days.

Ignore this letter at your peril: after this, there are no more reminders, just a court summons. Yes, you’ll be asked to appear before your local magistrates court to answer for your crime.

Court summons:

This seems a heavy-handed approach to dealing with a debt that for many people has accrued because they can’t afford the bill. 

I faced this situation myself as a student. I failed to keep up with the monthly payments and the council in question reacted by withdrawing my right to pay by instalments, swiftly followed by a court summons when I failed to pay the full year’s bill in one go.

Trying to come to an arrangement with the council at this point proved impossible as it refused to reinstate my monthly instalments.

Desperate to avoid court, I was sufficiently scared into admitting my money problems to a sympathetic friend who lent me the cash to clear my debt.

Good practice:

I was lucky that I had a friend to help out. But Iooking back, I feel the council could have been more helpful. It was this sort of heavy-handed approach that led debt charity Citizen’s Advice to issue councils with a good practice guide in 2009, to ensure better Council Tax arrears collection practices.

But even now, the very first letters householders receive if they miss a Council Tax payment is a demand for the bill to be paid within seven days or have the right to pay in instalments withdrawn. Surely this can’t be the right approach? Especially as council tax debt isn’t a problem that’s going away.

Last year Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales dealt with almost 170,000 problems involving Council Tax debt, an increase of 6 per cent on the year before.

Are you paying too much Council Tax?