Ensuring customers are not subject to unnecessary recovery action, additional costs or hardship
Dear Blaby District Council,
A council taxpayer who owes more than just the current year's liability runs the risk of incurring additional recovery costs through a further application for a liability order if payments which are intended for the current year's liability are allocated by the council's computer to the previous year's liability. This would most likely happen where a non specific payment is made and the computer software is set to automatically allocate these payments to the oldest year's debt.
Councils computer systems have the necessary flexibility to be set to allow non specific payments to be allocated to the arrears or the current year's liability.
I understand that the majority of billing authorities have their computer software set to ensure that their customers are not subject to unnecessary recovery action, additional costs or hardship, i.e. so non specific payments are allocated to the current year's liability.
How does Blaby District Council have its computer software set to deal with non specific payments. Current or oldest year's liability?
Yours faithfully,
Gwyn Worth
Dear Gwyn Worth,
Freedom of Information Request – FOI-17-1583
I acknowledge your request for information received on the 17/10/2017.
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(“the Act”) and will be responded to within 20 working days, as defined by
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Yours sincerely
Emily Henderson, Information Governance Officer
Dear Gwyn Worth,
Freedom of Information Request – FOI-17-1583
Please find enclosed a response to your request for information, which was
received on 17/10/2017, and has been dealt with under the Freedom of
Information Act 200 (“the Act”).
The authority uses Northgate software to administer council tax and
collection.
The software has 26 rules that it applies to payments to decide where to
allocate a payment that is made and to which specific debt or period.
Please see attached guide.
The authority apply a £1 tolerance so if the payment fits the rule within
£1 the payment will be applied to that particular rule. If the payment
receipt does not fit any of these rules then our optional final rule is to
allocate the payment to the oldest debt first. This process/procedure was
agreed in 2012.
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Yours sincerely
Emily Henderson, Information Governance Officer
Dear Emily Henderson,
Thank you for stating that unmatched payments (within a tolerance of £1.00) will be allocated to the oldest debt.
Would you please confirm whether or not any measures are in place (other than relying on the the council tax payer to make contact) to check that allocating an unmatched payment to the oldest debt in these circumstances would have the consequences of putting the current year's liability also in arrears, and if so, in accordance with R. v Miskin Lower Justices [1953] 1 Q.B. 533, whether the payment would be moved in respect of the current year's account to avoid unnecessary recovery action, additional costs etc.?
Yours sincerely,
Gwyn Worth
Dear Gwyn,
I have spoken to the department and can provide the following response to your additional question:
If a resident made contact with the local authority and requested that the payment be allocated against a different year we would consider this request and if appropriate, move the amount. Any unallocated payments that are delegated by the software as what we would call "soft" or "floating" cash are flagged on a daily report that is run after cash has been posted. Staff should be checking & considering the allocating/re-allocating of cash accordingly. Any payments that are hard allocated in accordance with our cash posting rules would only be moved on customer contact or if a member of staff were reviewing their account for whatever reason.
If you have any further queries, please email quoting the above reference number.
Yours sincerely
Emily Henderson
Information Governance Officer
Blaby District Council
[email address]
Telephone: 0116 272 7678
Visit Our Website: www.blaby.gov.uk
Please save paper and only print out what is necessary
Dear Freedom of Information Mailbox,
Thank you for the explanation.
I understand by logical deduction that any unspecified payments (unmatched) would be delegated by the software as "soft" or "floating" cash and would therefore not be allocated to the oldest debt first (presumably hard allocated) as stated initially.
But then something tells me there is a gap in my understanding on account of the reference to Staff allocating/re-allocating the cash. It is logical that floating cash would be allocated but is illogical that it would be re-allocated. For this to make sense it must be possible for cash which has been allocated to the oldest liability to also be floating?
Yours sincerely,
Gwyn Worth
Dear Gwyn,
In response to your query below the response is as follows:
After the 26 system posting rules have been explored if a payment made does not match any of these the payment gets allocated to the oldest debt. If there is no outstanding debt to allocate the payment to then the payment gets "soft allocated" & this requires staff to take a look. This could be if - for example - the payment was in excess of liability (they were overpaying) towards the end of a year or there was no liability to pay.
If you have any additional questions regarding this matter please send them directly to the Revenues department, I have included the contact details below.
Revenues Section
Blaby District Council
Council Offices
Desford Road
Narborough
Leicester
LE19 2EP
mailto:[email address]
Telephone:0116 272 7530
Kind Regards
Emily Henderson
Information Governance Officer
Blaby District Council
[email address]
Telephone: 0116 272 7678
Visit Our Website: www.blaby.gov.uk
Please save paper and only print out what is necessary
Dear Freedom of Information Mailbox,
Thank you for clarifying my query. I consider Blaby District Council has provided the information I requested, however, the purpose of this exercise was to ascertain whether or not the principles surrounding the appropriation of payments were being adhered to.
R v Miskin Lower Justices (1953)
It was held in R v Miskin Lower Justices, that where an amount obviously relates to a specific liability, it would be an unwarranted assumption to allocate the payment elsewhere.
If no instruction is given at the time of payment, then the council has a duty to allocate payment to the account which it is most beneficial to the debtor to reduce. That would be in the majority of cases the current liability if the consequences of allocating payment to the arrears meant that the customer was subject to unnecessary recovery action, additional costs etc.
I understand by the council indicating that there are no measures in place to ensure that unspecified payments are allocated to the account which it is least burdensome for the debtor (other than relying on customer contact) that the laws surrounding the appropriation of payments are not being complied with. If the laws of appropriation were being complied with, an unmatched payment allocated to the oldest debt (having the consequences of putting the current year's liability also in arrears) would be reallocated to the current year's liability on account of the circumstances implying that this was the debtor's intention (least burdensome for the debtor).
If it appears I have misunderstood anything from what I have stated above I would appreciate if you would correct me.
Yours sincerely,
Gwyn Worth
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