High Cost/Bulk Council Tax Liability Orders Impossible to Defend?

The request was partially successful.

Dear Billing Authority

Complaints to Magistrates for Council Tax (CT) Liability Orders.

Going as far back as is reasonable (eg 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?

Yours faithfully,

Lady Fleming

foi, Merton Borough Council

Thank you for your email message. We aim to respond to all requests under
the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and Environmental Information
Regulations 2004 within 20 working days.
More information about the way we deal with information requests is on our
web site at [1]www.merton.gov.uk/foi.
 
Information Governance Team
London Borough of Merton.
020 8545 4634
 
 
 

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References

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1. file:///tmp/www.merton.gov.uk/foi

Michael Cook, Merton Borough Council

1 Attachment

Dear Lady Fleming

 

Freedom of Information 2000 /Environmental Information Regulation request
2004 F12043

 

We have now considered your request for information as set out in your
email below. 

 

1.    Date Of hearing - please see spreadsheet

 

2. Number of CT Accounts Listed on a Complaint – please see spreadsheet

 

3. Total Court fee paid - Will be summons applications x £3.00 up to 25
July 2018 when the fee was reduced to 50p

 

4. length of hearing - defended/undefended - Individual lengths of
hearings are not recorded. The court allow a full morning's access to
facilities with the scheduled hearing operating from 10.00am. In some
instances the court hearing will run over into the afternoon but again
these details are not recorded.

 

5. Number of CT accounts Liability Order made against – please see
spreadsheet

 

6. Total costs awarded to Billing authority - From spreadsheet: Liability
orders x £110.00 for 2014/15 and £115.00 from 2015/16 onwards

 

7. Actual cost of preparing for and attending the hearing. - based on
16/17 figures £1,135,800 (total cost of all work up to issuing summons for
the whole year)

 

8. Number of Accounts in name of a Limited Company? - The information
requested will not be disclosed and in accordance with the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 this is a Refusal Notice.

 

Unfortunately we can not provide this information because it would exceed
the time limit for requests, which is 18 hours (as stated in the Freedom
of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004).  This is
because it is not possible to run an electronic report for the number of
limited companies summonsed for council tax. In order to locate this
information a manual search would need to be conducted of all records.
Therefore, the information requested is exempt under Section 12 of the
Act, which is that the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit.

 

Please consider refining your request so that it can be answered within
the time limit. You could do this requesting the number of limited
companies for one summons run which we may be able to provide.

 

You can appeal against the decision, if you wish to, please contact the
Head of Information at Merton Council, Civic Centre, Morden, SM4 5DX or
e-mail [1][Merton Borough Council request email]  

 

You can also appeal to the Information Commissioner at: Information
Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9
5AF.  Telephone:  0303 123 1113.  Website: [2]www.ico.org.uk

 

Kind regards

 

Michael Cook

 

 

Michael Cook

Information Governance Officer

Information Governance Team

Merton Council

[3]www.merton.gov.uk

 

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