No checks made before issuing court summons

Enid Brighton made this Freedom of Information request to Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

The request was successful.

Dear Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council,

I have it on good authority that Council Tax summonses are not checked individually before they are issued.

Parameters are agreed in advance by the relevant manager and set in its Council Tax processing system relating to the number of days behind and the monetary value etc., and summonses are issued on this basis.

The process is therefore completely automated yet a cost of £104 is recharged to the defendant. I'm aware it is unlawful to recharge an amount to the defendant which exceeds the council's incurred expenditure.

I would therefore like disclosing exactly what expenditure is incurred in addition to the obvious costs of stationary and postage for the authority to arrive at a £104 sum.

Yours faithfully,

Enid Brighton

FOI, Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council

Dear Enid,

RE: - REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

Thank you for your request for information held by Rochdale Council which was received by us on 30/03/2015 regarding the cost of issuing council tax summons.

I write to advise you that your request has been allocated to the department best able to deal with your queries, and will be considered under the Freedom of Information Act. Under the Act we are required to provide a response within 20 working days, however we do endeavour to provide a response at the earliest opportunity.

Should you have any queries, please contact us using the details below.

Yours sincerely,

Information Governance Unit
Customers & ICT
01706 925505
[Rochdale Council request email]

Rochdale Borough Council
Floor 2, Number One Riverside
Smith Street, Rochdale, OL16 1XU

To access our services go to www.rochdale.gov.uk
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Peter Moss, Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council

4 Attachments

Dear sir/madam

 

Please find the answers to your questions in your original email below. I
have added the answers, in blue, below your questions. In answer to your
final question, I have provided a breakdown in black.

 

Yours faithfully 

 

Peter Moss

Operations Manager - Collection

Revenues & Benefits - Collection & Support

 

[1]cid:image001.png@01D08418.99CA2DF0

 

[2]Phone [3]01706 926050

[4]Mail [5][email address]

 

Rochdale Borough Council

Floor 1, Number One Riverside

Smith Street, Rochdale, OL16 1XU

 

To access our services go to [6]www.rochdale.gov.uk

For news and social media updates go to [7]www.rochdale.gov.uk/news

 

 

 

From: FOI
Sent: 30 March 2015 11:59
To: Christine Aspinall
Subject: Request : 10164 - Cost of issuing council tax summons

 

[8]http://roc-mps-www30/SHDD_foi/IMAGES/Sit...

A request for information has been assigned to you. Please see below for
details of the request. Click [9]here to view details.

Requestor : Enid Brighton
Phone :
Department : External Org
Organisation / Company : whatdotheyknow.com

Request Type : Freedom of Information
Request Sub Type : FOI Access Request
Priority : Freedom of Information
Status : Open
Previous ID :
Route In :
Disclosure :
Fee :
Appeal :
ICO Complaint :

Description :
The below Freedom of Information request is due a response by Wednesday
29th April 2015.

-----------------------------

From: Enid Brighton
[[10]mailto:[FOI #260845 email]]
Sent: 29 March 2015 18:11
To: FOI
Subject: Freedom of Information request - No checks made before issuing
court summons

Dear Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council,

I have it on good authority that Council Tax summonses are not checked
individually before they are issued.

Summonses issued by Rochdale Council for non-payment of Council Tax are
individually checked before they are issued. The Council Tax Recovery Team
works on the list of cases to be summonsed in the weeks before summonses
are issued with the aim of contacting the customer to try to obtain
payment and/or discuss a suitable payment arrangement. We conduct this
exercise every month we issue summonses. The aim of conducting this
exercise prior to every summons run is to try to minimise the number of
summonses issued to customers and to maximise payment of council tax. We
try to avoid the addition of costs to accounts wherever possible and doing
this, and other, pre-summons work is an essential part of our effort to
achieve this.  

Parameters are agreed in advance by the relevant manager and set in its
Council Tax processing system relating to the number of days behind and
the monetary value etc., and summonses are issued on this basis.

Our Council Tax database parameters are set in line with legislation
including sequence of legal remedies (the order in which the actions we
can take must be taken), and the timescales between actions. We therefore
ensure that everyone is treated in the same way. We intervene in between
the stages set in the parameters in an effort to reduce the numbers of
recovery documents we issue. We only do one summons run per month so we
know that the list we work on will determine who will get a summons that
month. If we left the automation within the system to run without any
manual intervention, more summonses would be issued. I would add at this
point that even after the summonses have been issued, we do not leave the
system automation to run, we still attempt to contact customers.      

The process is therefore completely automated yet a cost of £104 is
recharged to the defendant. I'm aware it is unlawful to recharge an amount
to the defendant which exceeds the council's incurred expenditure.

Our process is not completely automated. The production of recovery
documents themselves is automated but there is a lot of manual
intervention before the final list of accounts to be summonsed is produced
and prepared for court. We set our Council Tax database parameters in line
with legislation and we add a number of additional steps.

I would therefore like disclosing exactly what expenditure is incurred in
addition to the obvious costs of stationary and postage for the authority
to arrive at a £104 sum.

Rochdale Council - Summons Costs
Council Tax Court Costs
2015/16 (based on 14/15
costs) Cost
£
Employees
Salaries & associated
staff costs 581,685
Supplies & Services
Printing, Stationery,
Postage 81,094
Contact Centre 254,463
Overheads 508,163
Associated Fees 13,609
Total 1,439,014
Number of Summons/LO
2014/15 14,271
Summons Costs 101 (plus £3 Court Fee = £104 Summons Cost)

 

Yours faithfully,

Enid Brighton

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ivanataylor left an annotation ()

Council Tax ex councillor questions Town and District Council

I would like to know if a complaint is actually laid before the Magistrates prior to a summons being issued by the Magistrates for non payment of Council tax?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw4I2gEt...