Myles Fitt on how joint working can reduce the impact of council tax debt
Council tax debt is a frequent issue that people bring to the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) each year.
It’s the most common type of debt advice we provide across the Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) network and has been for more than a decade. Our advisers treat this as a priority debt, due to the speed and scale of debt recovery. And as council tax debt is usually accompanied by other debts, it is often a red flag about wider financial difficulties.
It’s an issue that impacts both council taxpayers and councils alike. The process to recover arrears can put people in a worse financial position and the council can lose much-needed income. Councils can also find themselves spending money chasing arrears that have little or no chance of recovery because people simply don’t have the funds to pay.
Something had to be done to tackle this problem. So a few years ago, a group of stakeholders representing the public sector and money advice agencies (including CAS) came together to develop a Collaborative Guide to Council Tax Debt. This produced a series of recommendations for more efficient, effective and empathetic council tax debt collection, stressing that joint working between councils and advice agencies was key.
The collaborative work set out in that guide has led to the Scottish Government recently announcing 12-month funding for the CAB network to engage with local authorities across Scotland to take forward the Guide’s recommendations.
This follows the success of pilots in nine local authorities stretching from Borders to Highland, where the local CABs and councils worked closely together to look at ways in which council tax arrears could be prevented and council tax debt alleviated.
An example of this preventative activity was raising awareness of the Council Tax Reduction scheme, council tax discounts and where people can get advice and support. Another example was on improving the clarity of council tax billing to reduce barriers to payment based on misunderstanding of the bill.
For alleviating debt, referral protocols between councils and CABs were refined so that those in arrears could be given flexibility to pay while at the same time receive income maximisation support from the CAB to help with their wider financial position. Debt recovery processes were also reviewed to find any tension points contributing to people becoming stuck in a yearly, growing backlog of council tax debt.
These are just some of the many examples of successful activity from these pilots, and we know there is already good practice in local authorities across the country.
What this national roll-out will do is to build on what is already there, utilising the front-line experience of people using our CAB services and the insight of our advisers to suggest adjustments, enhancements and even strategic changes of approach to council tax collection. Collaborative working will help those struggling to make payments or in arrears as well as help local authorities recover missed payments, avoid the costs of debt collection, and make more efficient use of precious resources.
The CAB network is looking forward to reaching out to all local authorities – including those involved in the pilots – over the coming weeks to begin the process of linking up to scope out and deliver jointly agreed priorities for reducing the impact of council tax debt on all those it affects.
Myles Fitt is head of the financial health team at Citizens Advice Scotland.
This column was first published in the Herald www.theherald.co.uk
