In this month’s podcast on Debt Talk, Ripon Ray explored the current landscape for councils to recover council tax. Since the introduction of welfare reform over ten years ago, nearly every council in the UK expects some form of contribution from households regardless of whether many families were deemed too poor to pay prior to the introduction of the reform. At the same time, Britain has seen an increase in the recovery of council tax through the Magistrate's Courts.
While the number of households in arrears has increased throughout the country, there has been a surge in the use of civil enforcement agents to recover the council tax debt. Ripon Ray spoke with panelists from the debt enforcement and debt advice sector to explore the current framework in which councils work and ways council tax has been recovering the debt.
Samantha Nurse - Founder and CEO of Money Advice Hub spoke about the way councils throughout the UK charge council tax and the way they work out what support low-income households can get along with challenges debt advice services face during the cost of living crisis.
Russell Hamblin -Boone - Chief Executive Officer of Civil Enforcement Association Limited - explored how contracts between councils and civil enforcement companies work, and the way civil enforcement officers' actions are monitored and scrutinised for the benefit of vulnerable residents who are in debt. Also what role does the newly formed Enforcement Conduct Board play a part to support vulnerable communities during the cost of living crisis? From his point of the complaint process needs to be transparent and robust.
Both of my panelists provided some tips to ease the pressure during such a difficult time.
The next podcast will explore: ‘Small businesses and insolvency’ during the cost of living crisis.
