Question No

Question By

Cabinet Member

Subject

Q8/13-14

Mr J Williams

Councillor Lowry (Cabinet Member for Finance)

Councillor Peter Smith (Deputy Leader)

Liability Order Court Summons

Please breakdown the Authority’s costs for summoning a Council Tax payer to a Liability Order Court hearing between: -

1.    Court charges

2.    Printing

3.    Postage

4.    Staff salaries

5.    Other costs. 

What is the Authority’s reaction to the Parliamentary Answer by Bridget Prentice in 2009 that the cost of issuing a liability order was £3?

Response:

The £3 charge referred to by Bridget Prentice relates to the cost levied to local authorities by the court for the issue of a Liability Order. This is just one element of cost of a process that involves a lot of staff time and resource over several months.

We do not break down our costs to the level of detail as requested in this question however, we can confirm that the biggest element of this cost is staff time.

Other than the standard issuing of bills, reminders and final notices, significant staff time is spent in preparing the evidence required for liability orders. Staff resource also has to be present in court to manage legal and customer queries on the day. Post court, further work is needed to finalise the process and request attachments to benefits or earnings.

Liability Orders are a tool of last resort for the council. We continue to prioritise and focus on proactively working with our residents to better manage their finances and ensure that individuals access all of the benefits to which they are entitled to. 

PCC benchmarks against the CIPFA Group of 80 local authority members which demonstrates that our costs are reasonable, being lower than average. Our liability order costs of £83 compares to the average of £88 (CIPFA group average for 2012/13)

I entirely appreciate the nature of this question, and am equally mindful that increasing cost unnecessarily goes against our principles as a caring council, therefore I can assure the gentleman that I shall look further into this matter to ensure our costs are kept to a minimum and will personally feedback my findings.

Question No

Question By

Cabinet Member

Subject

Q9/13-14

Mr S Gomery

Councillor Lowry (Cabinet Member for Finance 

Councillor Penberthy (Cabinet Member for Co-operatives and Communities)

Councillor Williams (Children and Young People)

Impact of the Council Tax Reduction Scheme on families

The Joseph Rowntree Trust, describes Plymouth’s Council tax reduction scheme as among the harshest in the country in its impact on people on the lowest incomes.  This includes thousands of families with children.  How does PCC labour group justify such a charge on poor families given its ’Child Poverty Strategy’?   

Response:

The Government cut funding for Council Tax benefits and passed responsibility on to local councils to introduce their own local schemes from 1 April 2013.

Plymouth City Council, like many other councils across the country, introduced a scheme within the limited funding provided by government. We developed the scheme in partnership with several councils across the South West region.

For Plymouth, the reduction in Council Tax benefit funding in 2013/14 was circa £2.6m. Clearly, to address this level of reduction, we would have to ask more people to pay a larger proportion of their council tax bills.

More affluent, rural councils with a greater number of higher value properties, were able to exercise flexibility in levying the funding shortfall more towards those residents who are better able to pay. Unfortunately, for councils like Plymouth, with a higher proportion of Band A and B properties, the only way we could address a £2.6m cut was to apply less benefits across a wider number of households.

Our scheme is not untypical for an urban unitary council with a high dependency on the benefit state.

The implications of introducing a local Council Tax Support scheme, alongside other welfare reform changes such as implementation of the ‘bedroom tax’, has placed a significant burden on many individuals and families across the city. We remain committed to addressing child poverty and are proactively working with vulnerable families to provide advice and support. For example, we have been successful in helping many families to access funding and claim additional benefits to which they are entitled to.

Moving forward, we will continue to lobby the government for a fairer financial settlement. For example, recommending that the government imposes greater taxes on stocks and shares in order to put more money back into allocating Council Tax benefits to those most in need. 

Question No

Question By

Cabinet Member

Subject

Q10 /

13-14

Mr R Aldred

Councillor Lowry (Cabinet Member for Finance) Councillor Penberthy (Cabinet Member for Co-operatives and Communities)

Councillor Evans (Council Leader

Housing benefit: use of reserves

As Ed Miliband has said that if a Labour Government comes into power after the 2015 general election it will scrap the ‘Bedroom Tax’, will this Labour-led council use their reserves to make up the shortfall in housing benefit to protect Plymothians from the increased poverty they currently face?

Response:

Welfare reforms have cut the amount of benefit that people can get if they are deemed to have a spare bedroom in their council or housing association home. This measure has been applied to all housing benefit claimants of working age from 1 April 2013.

The power to reduce housing benefit in this way is contained in the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and is commonly referred to as the bedroom tax, size criteria or under-occupation penalty.

This is national legislation for which, unfortunately, the council has no discretion over. As such, we are not able to use reserves to protect the impact on Plymothians. However, we will continue to lobby government on the effect that welfare reform cuts are having on the most vulnerable residents in our city – for example, recommending that the government imposes greater taxes on stocks and shares in order to put more money back into allocating Council Tax benefits to those most in need.

We have also set up a welfare team to provide advice and support to individuals and families who are struggling with their finances as a result of welfare reform and have proactively helped many residents gain access to more funding and benefits, to which they are entitled, through this team.

Question No

Question By

Cabinet Member

Q11/

13-14

Mr N Buckley

Councillor Lowry (Cabinet Member for Finance)

Councillor Peter Smith (Deputy Leader)

Liability Order costs

Under what statutory provision is the City Council imposing £85.00 costs on each Liability Order for non-payment of Council tax benefit?  Plymouth City Council cannot impose financial penalties for non-payment of Council tax benefit.

Response:

Plymouth City Council continues to invest significant time and resource into helping individuals and families who are struggling to meet their financial obligations. We use a number of proactive measures for collecting income due to us such as helping people maximise their benefit entitlement, arranging flexible payment plans based on individual circumstances and providing practical support and advice through a dedicated welfare support team.

However, in a minority of cases, there is a need to pursue liability orders in relation to income that is due to us. The legislation that enables us to impose costs for issue of Liability Order for non-payment of Council Tax is Regulation 34(7) of The Council Tax (admin and enforcement) regulations 1992.

This regulation enables the council to recover costs reasonably incurred in obtaining the order.