Thank you for your information request.

This is an automated response and acknowledgement. If you have submitted a
request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or the Environmental
Information Regulations (EIR), we will aim to respond within the statutory
timescale of 20 working days.

Dear Lady Fleming

Re: Freedom of Information Request.

Thank you for your request for information under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000, received 5 February 2019. Your request has been
considered and our response is in bold below.

Your request states the following:

Going as far back as is reasonable (e.g. 5 years), up to the most recent
data available, Please could you provide me with a table of information
under the following headings:-

1. Date Of hearing
2. Number of CT Accounts Listed on a Complaint
3. Total Court fee paid
4. length of hearing - defended/undefended
5. Number of CT accounts Liability Order made against
6. Total costs awarded to Billing authority
7. Actual cost of preparing for and attending the hearing.
8. Number of Accounts in name of a Limited Company?

The Council’s Response

Where the information you have requested is held by the Council, this is
supplied in the attached spreadsheet under the headings as shown above.

In addition, please be aware of the following, which should also be taken
into account when reviewing the information supplied.

The hearings shown are the scheduled monthly Council Tax hearings. The
total court fees paid have been calculated by multiplying the total number
of summonses sent by £3.00 initially and by £0.50 from August 2018
onwards.

The length of any given hearing is not recorded separately and so it has
not been possible to determine the length of each of the hearings listed.
By default, then as there is no figure available, it is not possible to
differentiate the time between defended and undefended courts.

It was not entirely clear what you meant when by “total costs awarded to
Billing Authority”. The Council does not request that any additional
recovery costs are added on an individual basis by the court, whether an
appearance is made or not, and so this figure has been set as £0.00 in
each case.

As with the length of the hearing, the actual costs of preparing for and
attending the hearing are not recorded. These will again differ widely,
depending on the size of the court list and the complexity of cases. The
issue of determining the actual cost of preparing for and attending court
is always very complex anyway, given that the Council’s Court Officers and
other members of the Revenues Recovery Team deal with the preparation for
Court as a part of their daily responsibilities as a whole.

Finally, no separate record is held regarding the number of accounts in
the name of limited companies that were sent a Council Tax summons. It
would not now be possible to establish this information without
undertaking a manual exercise to examine each separate court list in turn.
This would be likely to exceed the 18 hour time constraint imposed by
Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. 

Appeals & Complaints Procedure

If you are dissatisfied with this response and wish to appeal, please
write to the Information Management Team at the address below and this
will be dealt with through our Internal Review procedure.
Information Management Team - Governance
London Borough of Hackney
Hackney Service Centre
1 Hillman Street
London E8 1DY

[1][email address]

Your request for an internal review should be submitted to us within 40
working days of receipt by you of this response. Any such request received
after this time will only be considered at the discretion of the Council.
 
If you are still not satisfied following the Internal Review, you have a
right to appeal to the Information Commissioner at the contact details
provided below.
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 01625 545 700
[2]www.ico.org.uk
 
Yours sincerely

Information Management Team
ICT Services
London Borough of Hackney    

Attachments:

[3]Information FOI-002557.XLSX  [4]Delete

References

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