Arrears and debt recovery

When you don't pay an instalment of council tax by the date it is due, we will send you a reminder, asking for payment within seven days. If you still don’t pay, a summons will be issued, which will add costs to your account.

If you pay the amount you owe but you fall behind with your instalments again we will send a second reminder. This gives you seven days to bring your instalments up to date. If you still don’t pay, a summons will be issued, which will add costs to your account.

We can only send a maximum of two reminder notices in any one financial year, so if you pay late a third time you will be sent a final notice for the full amount of council tax due for the rest of the year, and you will lose your right to pay in instalments.

The final notice gives you seven days to pay the full amount of council tax for the rest of the year. The final notice will tell you how much this will be.

If the council tax is not paid after the reminders or final notice have been sent, we will make a complaint to the magistrates' court and a summons will be issued, which will add costs to your account.

If you don’t pay your council tax after you have been reminded by a reminder notice or final notice, we make a complaint to the magistrates' court and a summons is issued.

What is a summons?

A summons is a court document telling you the date and time that the magistrates will consider whether they should issue a liability order against you, and where the hearing will take place.

It will also tell you the total amount of council tax you owe, the period of time it refers to and the costs you will have to pay.

You don’t need to go to the court hearing unless you have a legal defence against the issue of a liability order.

What you should do if you receive a summons

Pay the amount of council tax you owe in full, including costs as shown on the summons. If you do this your case will not be heard and the council will not apply for a liability order.

If you are unable to make payment in full and wish to make a payment arrangement, complete a payment arrangement form.

• Make a payment arrangement to pay your council tax

We will still apply for a liability order, but as long as you keep to the arrangement you have made, no further action will be taken.

What is a liability order?

A liability order is a demand for you to pay the full amount you owe, plus costs of £179.

It gives the council greater powers to collect the money you owe using a range of actions which include:

• asking your employer to take regular deductions from your salary
• taking money directly from your Income Support, Jobseeker’s Allowance or Employment and Support Allowance
• asking enforcement agents to visit your home and either collect the amount you owe or, if this is not possible, remove items belonging to you and sell them
• putting a charging order on your property, which means we could force its sale to pay your council tax arrears, or the arrears will be paid out of the amount you get for any future sale
• applying to make you bankrupt
• applying to the magistrates' court for your committal to prison.

The liability order allows us to do any of these, but only one at a time. We will ask you for information about your personal and financial situation before we consider these options.

Attachment of earnings

Once a liability order has been issued by the magistrates, we can collect unpaid council tax by serving an order on your employer.

This means they have to send some of the money they usually pay you to the council.

If you are paid monthly

If you are paid weekly

Your employer can also take an extra £1 each time towards the administrative costs of doing this.

Attachment of benefits

We ask the Department for Work and Pensions to send part of your Universal Credit, Income Support, Jobseeker's Allowance, or Employment and Support Allowance directly to us.

The amount deducted is £3.40 a week for Income Support and Jobseeker's Allowance.

For Employment and Support Allowance the amount to be deducted will be:

• one third of your allowance if it's contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance
• 5% of your allowance if it's income-based Employment and Support Allowance.

It is not possible to make direct deductions from any other kind of benefit.

If you haven't been in touch by the time the magistrates issue a liability order, and an attachment of earnings or benefit is not possible, we will ask enforcement agents to collect the outstanding sum of money.

They will add the costs of doing this to the total they collect from you. The more action they have to take, the more the costs will be.

We will also instruct enforcement agents if other arrangements to collect the money fail, for example, you make an arrangement to pay but don't keep to it.

Usually they will visit your home to try to collect cash or a cheque for the amount owed in the first instance. They may accept instalment payments, but don't have to.

The alternative is they remove items belonging to you and sell them at public auction to raise the money you owe both them and the council. This is known as taking control of goods and can be done:

• by any certificated enforcement agent (a person approved by the court)
• any day of the week between 6am and 9pm
• anywhere in England and Wales

An enforcement agent can't force their way into a property unless they have previously been allowed access.

When enforcement agents are in a property they can take goods up to the resale value of the council tax owed.

They can only take goods belonging to the person named on the liability order, but it is up to that person to prove if any goods on the property don't belong to them.

Controlled goods agreement

After "taking control of goods" the enforcement agent will probably let them stay on the property, as long as you make a satisfactory payment arrangement and keep to it.

Removal of goods

The enforcement agent can remove the goods from the property.

However, there are certain goods which they are not allowed to take. These include:

• fixtures and fittings
• tools, books, vehicles and other equipment that is necessary for your personal use in your work or business
• food, clothes, bedding, and any furniture or household equipment that is necessary to meet the basic needs of you and your family.

If enforcement agents can't find enough goods to remove, or can't gain access to a property, they will tell the council. We then have no choice but to start committal action.

If we have not been able to collect the money in any other way, the final option is to ask the magistrates' court to issue a summons for you to attend a committal hearing. This means the council will ask the magistrates to consider sending you to prison for non payment of council tax.

At the hearing, the magistrates will decide whether you have deliberately refused or neglected to pay or what other reasons there may have been for non-payment, and this will affect their decision.

There are several decisions they can make:

• If the magistrates believe you’ve refused or neglected to pay, they can send you to prison for up to 90 days or give you a suspended sentence of 90 days and set an amount for you to pay.
• If the magistrates believe you haven’t refused or neglected to pay, they can either dismiss the case so you can arrange payment with the council, or — though rarely — they may decide you don’t have to pay some or all of the debt, which would then be written off.

If the magistrates need more information or evidence they may adjourn the case. The matter would then be postponed to another, future court date.

You must attend a committal hearing.

If you don't attend we will ask the magistrates to issue a warrant for your arrest, normally with bail.