Dear Sir or Madam,

Please provide a breakdown of the different elements and/or actions
that make up the £97 listed as the councils costs on the Bristol
City Council Summons for non-payment of Council Tax. I have
searched the Councils website but cannot find this information.

Yours faithfully,

Ben Sansum

Thank you for your request for Information made under the Freedom of Information Act.

Your request will now be dealt with and a response will be sent within 20 working days.

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Dear Mr Sansom

Freedom of information request dated 2 April 2008.

With regard to how the costs are made up I attach a breakdown of costs for the financial year 2007/08. The cost figure takes the percentage of staff involvement in the recovery of Council Tax from the summons stage onwards. This figure is assessed at 27.3% and is taken from our gross local taxation budget of £5.665 million to arrive at a cost of £1.55 million. The estimated number of summonses processed in the financial year is 16000 and this is divided into £1.55 million which equals £97.This figure is reviewed annually.

The costs applied to summonses, by Bristol City Council Local Taxation, is notified to the Clerk to the Justices of Bristol Magistrates Court on an annual basis and is circulated to the Magistrates. The Court and the Magistrates have accepted the level of costs at our Liability Order hearings.

The purpose of the calculation is to determine an amount reasonably incurred in obtaining a liability order for payment. There is no prescribed method on how these costs should be derived and the calculation attached is an estimate of such.

The calculation of staff time (27.3%) is intended to estimate the time involved in all summons related work to obtain a liability order. This does not include for example issue of bills or reminders and time taken on enforcement of payment after a court liability order has been obtained.

For your information the task areas that the costs will cover will include for example:-

· Extracting from the revenues database preliminary summons lists
· Checking the preliminary summons extract
· Cross checking to ensure that the selected accounts have no relevant outstanding work which
should prevent a summons issue
· Production of a final summons extract
· Production of a complaint list for the court
· Production & posting of a summons to the defaulter
· Producing copy summonses for court purposes
· Answering telephone calls resultant from the issue of a summons
· Answering letters resultant from the issue of a summons
· Attending Court and prosecuting defaulters on behalf of the City Council
· Updating defaulters accounts to record the actions taken / agreements reached

this is not an exhaustive list but illustrates some of the key processes that the costs are intended to cover.

This response should answer your request in full, however if you are not satisfied with this response or wish to lodge an appeal against any exemptions that may have been applied, you can do so by writing to the Data Protection Officer at Bristol City Council Legal Services, The Council House, College Green, Bristol, or [Bristol City Council request email]. Details of the complaints procedure can be found at http://www.bristol-city.gov.uk/complaints.
If, after you have exhausted the council’s complaints procedure, you are still not satisfied with the response you have received you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner, details of your right to complain can be found at http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints.aspx
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Yours sincerely

Martin Smith
Local Tax Group Leader.

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