uncollected Council Tax
Case reference FOI2024/01125
Received 28 June 2024
Published 11 July 2024
Request
I am writing this request in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act. I’d be grateful if you could provide the following information:
1. For the years 2019-2020, 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24, please provide the number of individual cases of uncollected tax (full or partial amounts) Council Tax and the total amount in sterling of uncollected Council Tax in each of those years.
2. A breakdown into postcode area (or former borough boundary area if easier) of all uncollected (full or partial amounts) Council Tax cases in each of the years 2019-2020, 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24.
3. For each of the years set out above, the number of individual Council Tax debtor cases which were successfully concluded and taxes concluded and taxes collected (either in the financial of the same year or subsequently).
4. For each of the years set about above, the number of individual Council Tax debtor cases which have remained pending/ongoing without successful conclusion For each of the years above, the number of individual Council Tax debtor cases which have been written off by the authority and taxes not collected
Response
I am writing this request in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act. I’d be grateful if you could provide the following information:
1. For the years 2019-2020, 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24, please provide the number of individual cases of uncollected tax (full or partial amounts) Council Tax and the total amount in sterling of uncollected Council Tax in each of those years.
2. A breakdown into postcode area (or former borough boundary area if easier) of all uncollected (full or partial amounts) Council Tax cases in each of the years 2019-2020, 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24.
3. For each of the years set out above, the number of individual Council Tax debtor cases which were successfully concluded and taxes concluded and taxes collected (either in the financial of the same year or subsequently).
4. For each of the years set about above, the number of individual Council Tax debtor cases which have remained pending/ongoing without successful conclusion For each of the years above, the number of individual Council Tax debtor cases which have been written off by the authority and taxes not collected
This information is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within the Appropriate Time Limit which equates to 18 hours as defined by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004.
For Q1 – Q4: The Service Area have advised that our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested officers would need to look at all cases for each year individually. As there is between 22,000 and 31,000 cases depending on what year this would be over the 18 hours allowed. To look at 22,000 cases would take 3 minutes per case, which comes to 1,100 hours.
For the final part of your request: Between 01st April 2019 and 31st March 2024 there have been 10,044 cases that have been written off for various reasons. To answer your question the Service Area would need to look at every case individually which at 3 minutes a case would take 502 hours.
Where the Limit is exceeded Public Authorities are not obliged to supply the information requested by virtue of S12 of the Act. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
If you wish to narrow down your request, and resubmit I can then review with the Service Area to see if it is answerable within the limit.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.