The figures for Bristol Council Tax summonses and liability orders are in, and very interesting reading they make. With 166,380 households, the council produced 22,700 chargeable summonses in the last financial year, giving a summons-to-household ratio of 1:7.
However, with a single fee of £103, the council is way on top of the league in its fee level, grossing £2,338,100 in the last financial year. having pulling in over £28 million since the charging scheme started. But what is especially interesting about Bristol though is that it is one of the few councils that has been asked to justify its charges and its answer very much conforms with what we were told yesterday.
We do, though, seem to have a slight variation on a theme. The authority assigns a notional percentage of staff time spent on "recovery and enforcement", then applying that percentage to the overall cost of the revenue collection operation in order to work out its summons cost.
Thus we see in 2007/8, 27.3 percent of the staff time – amounting to 21 full-time equivalents - allocated to "recovery and enforcement", which means that the cost of sending out a claimed 16,000 summonses is that percentage of the £5.7 million total budget – or £1.6 million. Some of the tasks specified, that the costs supposedly cover, are set out here.
One really has to do a double-take here, for looking at the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992, the allowable charges are set out quite clearly – in summary here:
After a summons has been issued, (but before the application for a liability order is heard): a sum equal to the costs reasonably incurred by the authority in connection with the application up to the time of the payment or tender, Section 34 (5)By any reckoning, charging a single fee to cover summonses and liability orders cannot be legal. If the council sends out a summons, and they get a payment by return, it has incurred nothing more than the cost of sending out a mailshot, very similar to sending out a final notice, which is also a statutory document.
After the liability order has been issued: a sum equal to the costs reasonably incurred by the applicant in obtaining the order. Section 34 (7)(b)
And here, from Nuneaton and Bedfordshire on 26 October 2010, we get the cost to the authority of producing a final notice, including stationery, printing, postage and staffing costs is £1.22 per notice. Even adding a certain amount of extra processing to get the court approval for the summonses, you would be very hard put to it to double the costs, which means we are talking of a huge rip-off.
Then one comes to the liability order, where the law states that the costs apply to obtaining the order. There is not the remotest sanction for ladling in all the follow-up costs, which have Bristol allocating the costs of 70 percent of the 23-strong "customer services team" to recovery and enfrcement.
What Bristol officials have not actually worked out is that, with 21 staff (FTEs) allocated, that amounts annually to over 35,000 staff hours devoted to its notional 16,000 defaulters. At over two hours each, council officials could afford to hand-deliver each summons and sit down with each defaulter to discuss payments over a cup of tea.
As the evidence build, therefore, it becomes more and more clear that officials are abusing the system. And up there is the premier league are the Bristol Bandits.
COMMENT "STEALTH TAX" THREAD
The first ten results from the survey of Council Tax summons and liability order costs are in and processed, shown in the table above. The figures relate to the financial year 2010/11. Fees are those prevailing at the time – many have increased since.
What comes over is the huge range of results, even in this very small sample. The outright leader is Bradford MDC, sending out 48,577 summonses and charging over £3.2 million, compared with Craven with 1,432 summonses, charging £95,680.
In relative terms, though, when expressed as a ratio of summonses sent compared with the number of households, Bradford is still leader of the pack. It sends summonses to one in four households – four times as many, pro rata, as the lowest scorer, Craven District Council. Just to emphasise this, one in four households in Bradford get a summons - at £55 each. This is not debt recovery. It is big business.
Interestingly, Calderdale, the second-highest charger – in relative terms (joint second with Ipswich) is also a West Yorkshire Council, charging £1.2 million – almost as much as the London Borough of Bromley, which has fifty percent more households. It will be instructive to see what the other W. Yorks councils are doing.
As well as the range in the numbers of summonses, there is a huge discrepancy in fees charged, ranging from £57 at the lowest (although this has gone up), to £100 in Ipswich. Given that this is supposed to be based on actual costs incurred – which must be broadly similar – there is no obvious reason why this should be so.
To remind readers of the question, this is below. For most local authorities, all it takes is an e-mail. None have so far refused to answer, and there is no charge.
Please supply information on the number of Summonses and Liability Orders issued by the Council in respect of Council Tax, for each of the financial years since April 1992 to the present, itemised separately by year and document type, and the total fees charged for each year (specifically for the two documents), again itemised separately by year and document type.More results are coming in, at a fairly steady rate, and I will post them on the blog – with a commentary – as and when I have processed them. I should imagine that, as more results come in, the rankings will change, but we have a long way to go with 326 English authorities to look at.
COMMENT "STEALTH TAX" THREAD
The European Commission has threatened to take legal action against Britain if ministers do not water down rules limiting foreigners' ability to claim benefits - says Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary in The Failygraph. He adds that the commission's move is part of a "wider movement" by the "unelected and unaccountable" European authorities to extend their power over the UK.
But the story is a pile of horse manure. What the the commission has actually done is "request" the UK to end "discriminatory conditions" on "the right to reside as a worker" which exclude from certain social benefits nationals from eight of the ten member states (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland) that joined the EU in 2004.
According to the UK Worker Registration Scheme, nationals from these countries who stop work before completing one year with an authorised employer do not have the right to reside as a worker.
This right to reside is one of the conditions of UK legislation to qualify for Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, Crisis Loans, and allocation of social housing and provision of homelessness assistance. Without this right to reside ("Right to Reside Test") nationals from these member states are currently excluded from receiving these benefits.
The commission considers that this is contrary to the transitional arrangements on the free movement of workers. These allowed the UK to restrict nationals from the 2004 enlargement group, refusing them permission reside in the UK until the end of April 2011.
Crucially though, these provisions already apply to the nationals of other EU member states, and the seven-year transitional arrangements were ratified by the Blair government in 2003, as part of the accession treaties. Thus, if Iain Duncan Smith has cause for any grief, it is with Blair's government, not forgetting that the Tories were in favour of enlargement and would have agreed exactly the same deal.
However, on the eve of the Tory conference, it is essential that the Tories demonstrate that they are true "eurosceptics", so here we go with faux eurosceptic stories pouring out of the woodwork, to keep the faithful happy. And they fall for it every time.
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