Apparent Breach of Code of Data Matching Practice

Dear Bolton Borough Council,

Your web site includes a statement about the NFI in which it states
that

Computerised data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and
payments to be identified. Where a match is found it indicates that
there is an inconsistency that requires further investigation.
Investigations should be carried out using your usual practices for
investigating fraud and error.

You include a link to a statutory code of data matching that states
the same thing in sections 1.2.3. The code says that all involved
must by law have regard to it.

However, I note that in a report dated March 2010 your head of
audit appears to contradict this. It states

Matched data does not necessarily indicate error or fraud. For
example one of the payroll matches is employees who appear to be
the same person having two jobs with the same authority. Another
match is those having two jobs but with different authorities.
However these may be legitimate because of various reasons
including part time jobs, a change of job during the year and the
persons matched being mistaken for the same person.

May I point out that the same applies to the electoral register
council tax match. It is perfectly legal in itself to receieve a
discount when more than one person is on the electoral register, as
the additional person may fall to be disregarded and for other
reasons.

May I ask therefore for any background papers you have on
discussions of whether it is right to send personal data to the
Audit Commission when the data processing and comparison falls
outside the types allowed by the statutory code and is not in fact
'data matching' as that term is defined via the code. May I also
ask why you are putting notices on your web site that are supposed
to be fair processing notices but which give false information, as
explicitly accepted by your staff in their report.

May I ask how many council tax claim or review forms have been sent
out to discount recipients as a whole since 2005 and the dates on
which these were sent.

I note that you have listed 21 'rising 18s' cases as 'frauds' even
though it has been stated that the dwellings were probably fully
entitled to a discount on disregard grounds and the cancelled
discount will have to be put back. This beggars belief. Unless the
adults did not fall to be disregarded no duty arose to inform you
of changed circumstances.

Please explain the logic in labelling people who are entitled to
the discount as criminals and whether these people will be reported
back to the National Fraud Initiative as criminals.

Please also inform me whether the household involved have been told
that you have listed them as criminals and reported them as such,
albeit anonymously, in reports to councillors.

Please explain what training if any the persons dealing with these
matches have in council tax law and whether for example they are
IRRV qualified.

Yours faithfully,

K Hodgkinson

Dear Wiper, Carl,

I am afraid that you are stating council tax law incorrectly. It
appears that there are in your council IRRV qualified staff who
have been specifically trained in Council Tax Admin Law. Perhaps
you could check with them. In the meantime, the information below,
derived from a legal briefing prepared for the Audit Commission by
its legal team, may help to correct some of your basic
misunderstandings. I hope you find this helpful. The law is on the
internet too: it comprises the statute law, the admin and
enforcement regs and the demand notice regs.

An accurate account of this law, including the actual obligations
of a discount recipient, is available on the Whatdotheyknow web
site. It was produced by an Audit Commission solicitor in response
to complaints that National Fraud Initiative publications included
precisely the sort of false information you have published here on
this web site.

Specifically, there is no resonsibility to inform the council tax
department if a young person who falls to be disregarded turns 18,
if a disregarded person moves in, or if a person whose sole or main
residence is elsewhere legally registers to vote at an address
where they are only occasionally resident.

You refer to a 'single person discount' and make the basic error of
assuming that this discount may only be deducted from a bill when
only one person is resident. This is not legally the case. For
example, the council has the power to decide what steps to take
when carrying out its statutory duty to ascertain whether any
discount should apply. These steps need not in fact include asking
for an annual form to be filled in. The law refers to 'the
appropriate amount' several times. This amount is deducted at the
start of the tax year. It is not, by the way 'awarded'. This term
comes from benefit law and is misleading in the context of tax,
which works differently. By law, the amount is deducted on the
basis of not one but two statutory assumptions as to future
entitlement to the rate and amount of discount ie 25%. Entitlement
continues so long as the criteria set out in Section 11 apply. The
law sets out the obligations of the taxpayer which are to inform
the council within a reasonable time of realising it if either he
or she becomes entitled only to a smaller rate than 25% or if he or
she realises that there is no longer any entitlement to a 25%
discount.

Too many people falsely believe that for example the presence of an
adult on the electoral registe but not on council tax data basis is
in itself evidence of a change in circumstances which by law the
taxpayer should have reported. In law, in fact, there is no need to
report a change in residence, only to report that the sums ie the
finance are wrong.

Let me quote from the legal briefing produced by the Audit
Commission, who finally got round to looking into council tax law
as a result of complaints.

Regulation 14 provides that before making any calculation for the
purposes of Part V of the Regulations of the chargeable amount in
respect of any dwelling in its area, an authority shall take
reasonable steps to ascertain whether that amount is subject to a
discount, and if so, the amount of that discount. Regulation 15
provides that where having taken those reasonable steps (1) an
authority has no reason to believe that the chargeable amount for
the financial year concerned is subject to a discount, it shall
assume, in making any calculation of the chargeable amount, that
the chargeable amount is not subject to the discount; and (2) an
authority has reason to believe that the chargeable amount for the
financial year concerned is subject to a discount of a particular
amount, it shall assume, in making the calculation of the
chargeable amount, that the chargeable amount is subject to a
discount of that amount.

Regulation 16 sets out the duties of the taxpayer, and it has a sub
heading 'correction of assumptions'. The assumptions are those set
out above, which by law, form the basis on which the appropriate
amount at the rate set out in law has been deducted from the bill.

Regulation 16 goes on to provide that where a person-
(a) has been informed in accordance with any provision of demand
notice regulations [as to which see paragraph 12 below] of an
assumption as to discount made in his case; and (b) at any time
before the end of the financial year following the financial year
in respect of which the assumption is made has reason to believe
that the chargeable amount is not in fact subject to any discount,
or is subject to a discount of a smaller amount, he shall, within
the period of 21 days beginning on the day on which he first has
reason so to believe, notify the authority in writing of his
belief.

A demand notice is a written notice that an authority must serve
for each financial year on every person liable to pay council tax
under regulation 18, in accordance with regulations 19-21. Under
regulation 20, the demand notice shall require the making of
payments of the authority’s estimate of the chargeable amount made,
as respects part or whole of the relevant year, on various
assumptions, including in regulation 20(3)(e) that if, by virtue of
regulation 15(1), the chargeable amount is assumed not to be
subject to a discount on the day the notice is issued, that it will
not be subject to a discount as regards any day after the issue of
the notice; and in 20(3)(f) that if, by virtue of regulation 15(2),
the chargeable amount is assumed to be subject to a discount on the
day the notice is issued, that it will continue to be subject to
the same rate of discount as regards every day after the issue of
the notice.

You are very late in responding to my request. I wonder whether you
could hurry up a little.

Yours sincerely,

K Hodgkinson

Dear Bolton,

The email address given above does not work.

Yours sincerely,

K Hodgkinson