Council Tax Exemption Regulations

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Dear Goldsmiths, University of London,

The current regulations regarding student exemption from council tax state that in order to be classified as a full time student you must be;

"enrolled to attend a course of education lasting for at least one academic or calendar year - and which you are normally required to attend for at least 24 weeks out of the year and study for at least 21 hours per week during term time"

"Attendance" is defined as face to face contact teaching time with a lecturer/teacher, and does not include unsupervised individual or group study or examinations.

Could you please tell me,

1) How do you define a full time course?

2) How many full time (as defined by the university) courses do you teach each year?

3) How many full time students are enrolled at Goldsmiths, University of London?

4) How many of the full time courses that you run would be classed as full time under the regulations above?

5) How many full time students are enrolled on the courses listed in question 4?

Yours faithfully,

Kiara Vincent

Alison Ahern, Goldsmiths, University of London

Dear Kiara

In response to your queries regarding council tax.

1) How do you define a full time course?

According to our regulations

1.6 A 'full-time student' means a student enrolled full-time at the College, who is following a programme of study or research normally involving twenty-one hours or more per week of prescribed attendance or activities during term.

2) How many full time (as defined by the university) courses do you
teach each year?

In 10/11 there are 246 active (ie. with enrolments) FT programmes. This excludes visiting/exchange and associate research programmes.

In 09/10, there were 259 (by the same terms as above).

3) How many full time students are enrolled at Goldsmiths,
University of London?

10/11 to date - 7787 (excluding visiting/exchange and associate research students)

09/10 - 7224.

4) How many of the full time courses that you run would be classed
as full time under the regulations above?

All of them, as per question 2

5) How many full time students are enrolled on the courses listed
in question 4?

10/11 to date - 7787 (excluding visiting/exchange and associate research students)

09/10 - 7224.

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require further information

Yours sincerely

Alison Ahern
Director of Student Services
Richard Hoggart Building
Goldsmiths

0207 919 7075

Dear Alison Ahern,

Thank you very much for your swift response.

Yours sincerely,

Kiara Vincent

Dear Goldsmiths, University of London,

Having reviewed your response I have noticed that the answers you have have provided for questions 4 and 5 may not be accurate. This may be due to the wording of my request, which was not very clear. Other institutions have needed clarification, so I have included the background information they have been provided with as well.

My research is trying to determine whether the current regulations governing student exemption from council tax are fit for purpose. I have surveyed students about their experience of the amount of timetabled face to face contact teaching time they received on full time courses at UK higher education intuitions. This showed that many institutions have a low number of contact teaching hours per week, and expect students to do a large proportion of private unsupervised study.

However, the council tax exemption regulations are written in a way that discounts unsupervised study or examinations as actual 'attendance' at the institution. Therefore, in order to determine if the regulations are fit for purpose or not, I would need to know how many courses you run actually meet the council tax exemption regulations as they stand, i.e. those courses that have at least 21 hours of contact teaching time per week, for at least 24 weeks of the year.

In your response you state that all of your full time courses (as per question 2) also comply with the council tax regulations. However, after reviewing the course timetables for your courses, I know this not to be true. For example, your BA History degree FT (year 1) has four modules, totalling 120 credits over the year, each with a one hour lecture and a one hour seminar per week over four 5 week blocks. This only gives a total of 8 hours of 'attendance' per week over the year. This effectively means that those taking this course are not exempt from council tax as the regulations stand - showing the need for the regulations to change.

If possible could your review your response and provide me with a more accurate response to questions 4 and 5.

Thanks in advance

Yours faithfully,

Kiara Vincent

Goldsmiths CGIM, Goldsmiths, University of London

Dear Ms Vincent -

I have forwarded your followup enquiry to the Director of Student Services
for consideration. However, as she provided the College's response to this
request just before going on holiday, you should not expect to receive any
further communication on this matter until early May.

Please note that the email address [Goldsmiths, University of London request email] for Freedom of
Information requests has been obsolete for almost two years, having been
replaced by [email address], and will be withdrawn entirely at some point
in the next few months.

Yours sincerely

Rosemary Harrison
Head of Corporate Governance
& Information Management
Goldsmiths, University of London

--On 16 April 2011 03:45 +0100 Kiara Vincent
<[FOI #67668 email]> wrote:

show quoted sections

Alison Ahern, Goldsmiths, University of London

Dear Kiara

Apologies for the delay in reply to you. I have consulted with my
colleagues and understand that when a new course is set up we do ask
department for these details but Departments are only required to provide
summaries and learning outcomes for existing courses. In order to get the
information you can access the class timetables in each department which
are available on -line and are in the public domain. I suspect this would
be very time consuming and not really helpful to you.

One of my colleagues has noted that you state:

"the council tax exemption regulations are written in a way that discounts
unsupervised study or examinations as actual 'attendance' at the
institution. Therefore, in order to determine if the regulations are fit
for purpose or not, I would need to know how many courses you run actually
meet the council tax exemption regulations as they stand, i.e. those
courses that have at least 21 hours of contact teaching time per week, for
at least 24 weeks of the year."

In fact, the Council tax regulations do not define "attendance" as
"contact time" .

The definition of a full-time course is here:

[1]http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1992/...

Part 2, 4, (1)

It states that the 21 hours per week may consist of "periods of study,
tuition or work experience" and the College's position (along with most if
not all other HE institutions) is that this means both direct contact and
individual study.

The assertion in the following paragraph, extrapolated from the
information in the 1st year BA History timetable, that our programmes do
not meet the requirements for Council tax exemption is therefore incorrect
and, as a consequence, it would really not be possible for us to provide
"a more accurate response to questions 4 and 5" as is subsequently
requested.

From our correspondence I think the following link may be of interest to
you, not something that you have requested but of interest/ use I suspect

[2]http://www.housingandpropertylawdaily.co...

Yours sincerely

Alison Ahern

Dear Goldsmiths, University of London,

>>

>>

>> Having reviewed your response I have noticed that the answers you

>> have have provided for questions 4 and 5 may not be accurate. This

>> may be due to the wording of my request, which was not very clear.

>> Other institutions have needed clarification, so I have included the

>> background information they have been provided with as well.

>>

>> My research is trying to determine whether the current regulations

>> governing student exemption from council tax are fit for purpose. I

>> have surveyed students about their experience of the amount of

>> timetabled face to face contact teaching time they received on full

>> time courses at UK higher education intuitions. This showed that many

>> institutions have a low number of contact teaching hours per week,

>> and expect students to do a large proportion of private unsupervised

>> study.

>>

>> However, the council tax exemption regulations are written in a way

>> that discounts unsupervised study or examinations as actual
'attendance'

>> at the institution. Therefore, in order to determine if the

>> regulations are fit for purpose or not, I would need to know how many

>> courses you run actually meet the council tax exemption regulations

>> as they stand, I.e. those courses that have at least 21 hours of

>> contact teaching time per week, for at least 24 weeks of the year.

>>

>> In your response you state that all of your full time courses (as per

>> question 2) also comply with the council tax regulations. However,

>> after reviewing the course timetables for your courses, I know this

>> not to be true. For example, your BA History degree FT (year 1) has

>> four modules, totalling 120 credits over the year, each with a one

>> hour lecture and a one hour seminar per week over four 5 week blocks.

>> This only gives a total of 8 hours of 'attendance' per week over the
year.

>> This effectively means that

>> those taking this course are not exempt from council tax as the

>> regulations stand - showing the need for the regulations to change.

>>

>> If possible could your review your response and provide me with a

>> more accurate response to questions 4 and 5.

>>

>> Thanks in advance

>>

>>

>> Yours faithfully,

>>

>>

>> Kiara Vincent

Alison Ahern
Director of Student Services
Goldsmiths, University of London

020 7919 7075

References

Visible links
1. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1992/...
2. http://www.housingandpropertylawdaily.co...

Dear Alison Ahern,

Thank you for you help.

Yours sincerely,

Kiara Vincent