Council tax arrears 2022/23 and 2023/24
Case reference FOI2024/01537
Received 13 September 2024
Published 2 October 2024
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information regarding council tax arrears in your jurisdiction.
1. Total Number of Council Tax Arrears Cases
a) Please provide the total number of council tax accounts that are currently in arrears as of the date of this request, regardless of whether they have been referred for legal recovery.
b) Additionally, please provide the total amount of council tax owed across all accounts in arrears identified in part 1a.
2. Top Three Largest Council Tax Arrears by Individual Accounts
Please provide the top three biggest outstanding council tax arrears owed by account holders as of the date of this request. For each of the three cases, please include:
o The arrears amount
o The length of time since the debt was first referred to recovery or legal action
o The first three digits of the postcode where the account is registered (or, if the area is sparsely populated, the first two digits; if this would still be too revealing of personal data, I'm happy for you to omit this part of the question)
3. Referral to Legal Proceedings
How many council tax arrears cases were referred to court for the issuance of liability orders in the financial years:
a) 2022/23 and
b) 2023/24?
4. Use of Bailiffs
Please provide the number of council tax arrears cases referred to bailiffs for recovery in:
a) 2022/23 and
b) 2023/24.
Response
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information regarding council tax arrears in your jurisdiction.
1. Total Number of Council Tax Arrears Cases
a) Please provide the total number of council tax accounts that are currently in arrears as of the date of this request, regardless of whether they have been referred for legal recovery.
b) Additionally, please provide the total amount of council tax owed across all accounts in arrears identified in part 1a.
2. Top Three Largest Council Tax Arrears by Individual Accounts
Please provide the top three biggest outstanding council tax arrears owed by account holders as of the date of this request. For each of the three cases, please include:
o The arrears amount
o The length of time since the debt was first referred to recovery or legal action
o The first three digits of the postcode where the account is registered (or, if the area is sparsely populated, the first two digits; if this would still be too revealing of personal data, I'm happy for you to omit this part of the question)
3. Referral to Legal Proceedings
How many council tax arrears cases were referred to court for the issuance of liability orders in the financial years:
a) 2022/23 and
b) 2023/24?
4. Use of Bailiffs
Please provide the number of council tax arrears cases referred to bailiffs for recovery in:
a) 2022/23 and
b) 2023/24.
Answer: The information for questions 1a and 1b 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.
Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested, officers would need to manually check individual files for this information. An initial search has shown that 14,104 files would need to be checked for this information, and it is estimated that it would take 2 minutes to check each file. Once the details had been identified this would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures requested could be calculated.
This would at a conservative estimate take at least 470 hours to complete. 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.
However, within the 18 hour limit, we can provide answers for the remaining questions as requested. Please advise us if this is something you require.
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.