Dear Mr Cant

Re: - Request for Information - Council Tax - Reference Number:  COR/CTAX/FOI/6068

Further to the letter dated 23 November 2009 from Lynn Evans, I now provide below as much of that the information that Manchester City Council can locate, retrieve and extract within the FoIA statutory cost limit.

In some cases, we do not hold the information in exactly the form that you have requested, but I have included what we have in the hope that it will be of use to you.

The first seven requests that you made are included in the table at Appendix 1. These were:

1. Number of Council Tax bills sent.

2. Number of summons.

3. Number of Liability Orders gained for accounts that are for the current Council Tax period.

4. Court Fund account (totals collected in respect of Court Charges across all accounts you gain Liability Orders on) for each year.

5. Cost paid to Court each year (or cost per Liability Order).

6. Cases sent to bailiffs.

7. Total collected by bailiffs.

I have responded to your other queries below:

8. An indication as to what the Court Fund's collection accounts pays for.

Costs charged to debtors on the issue of a summons fund all the recovery work that is required and undertaken by Manchester City Council staff once the summons has been issued.

9. An indication to any policy that you have in place to ensure you protect vulnerable customers from the Court Action to the bailiffs.

The Council's Bailiff Code of Practice is available on the Council's website at the following link:

https://secure.manchester.gov.uk/downloads/file/11536/bailiff_code_of_practice

10. Any and all agreed rates and conditions that your instructed bailiff should maintain.

The principle bailiff fees currently in operation are as follows (extracted from the Council's Debt Recovery Policy):

Solace

I understand that you will be making a separate request in relation to the information you require about SOLACE

Can you list for each year since 2000, the following:

13. Bankruptcy threatened.

This information is not held

14. Bankruptcy action started.

Taking the referral of a debt to our external partners (solicitors) as the starting point for a bankruptcy, I can confirm that no actions were started prior to the 2003/4 financial year. From April 2003 the number of referrals was as follows:

2003/4 4

2004/5 257

2005/6 688

2006/7 401

2007/8 87

2008/9 6

2009/10 1

15. Bankruptcy action completed.

No one was actually made bankrupt prior to the financial year 2004/5. The figures below relate to the dates when the debtor was actually made bankrupt.

2004/5 3

2005/6 175

2006/7 170

2007/8 64

2008/9 21

2009/10 0

16. What is the total costs for each of the above actions, (if cost-able)

This is not available.

17. How many attachment of earnings do you achieve each year.

The figures below are the number of attachments that are requested each year. We do not keep figures of how many actually went into payment. We know at any given time how many attachments are in payment, but this figure changes on a weekly basis as new attachments start and existing ones end or are cancelled.

2000/1 4,818

2001/2 4,406

2002/3 3,333

2003/4 3,387

2004/5 4,163

2005/6 2,914

2006/7 2,662

2007/8 2,815

2008/9 3,033

18. Please list all further actions taken between liability orders and bankruptcy that the council tax do against the tax payers each year.

This information is contained in the Council's Debt Recovery Policy available on our website at:

https://secure.manchester.gov.uk/downloads/file/11535/debt_recovery_policy

The effectiveness of all recovery activity is reviewed on an ongoing basis and appropriate action is taken. In the past, this has included formalising the trial of bankruptcies, working with four bailiff companies instead of two, automating the application for attachments of benefits, following up applications for attachments of earnings where no payment is received and significantly reducing the number of committal applications due to wilful non payment of Council Tax. This list is not exhaustive but to identify and summarise all such reviews is not possible within the prescribed time limits.

20. What is the total costs for each of the above actions, (if cost-able).

It is not possible to accurately cost any specific recovery method. This is because each action is the culmination of a series of events, contacts and interactions with Council Tax payers who are in arrears. The amount of work involved varies significantly from case to case.

Please note if you are not satisfied with this response you may ask for an internal review. If you wish to complain you should contact Lynn Evans, Information Compliance Officer ([Manchester City Council request email]) in the first instance. Your complaint will be considered by a senior officer who has not already been involved with this response. If you require more information about the Council's access to information complaints procedure this can be downloaded from http://www.manchester.gov.uk/site/scripts/download_info.php?fileID=5769.

Alternatively, if you prefer a paper copy, please let me know.

Please also note that if you have exhausted the internal Councils' review procedures and you are still not satisfied you have the right to appeal to the Information Commissioner (ICO). Details of this procedure can be found on the ICO website: http://www.ico.gov.uk

Alternatively the ICO can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Tel: 01625 545700

Fax: 01625 524510

http://www.ico.gov.uk/

If you have any queries about this letter please contact me. Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

Yours sincerely

Charles Metcalfe

Charles Metcalfe

Revenues Manager

Appendix 1

This information is from a variety of sources. This is why some figures have been rounded and some are more precise

*We do not separate Liability Orders obtained in respect of current year debt from Liability Orders (L.O.s) obtained in respect of arrears from previous years. These figures are the total number of L.O.s obtained in each financial year.

**The cost of applying for a Liability Order increased from 70p to £3 at the beginning of April 2007.