Financial support and recovery procedures

This is what will happen if you do not pay your Council Tax on time.

Step 1: First Reminder

If you do not pay an instalment on time, you will be sent a reminder notice.

Step 2: Second Reminder

If it happens again during the financial year, you'll get a second reminder.

Step 3: Final Notice

If you miss a payment for the third time during the financial year we’ll send you a Final Notice. This means you need to pay the whole balance in one go.

You may be able to avoid paying the full amount by contacting us to bring your account up to date and set up a Direct Debit for your future instalments. This can be done by completing our Direct Debit payment form.

It's crucial to pay your Council Tax on time. Here's what happens if you don’t pay and bring your account up to date when you get a Reminder or Final Notice:

Step 1: Deadline

After you get the Reminder or Final Notice, you have 7 days to pay. If you don't pay, we'll send a Summons with costs of £70 added.

Step 2: Court Summons

The Summons gives you at least 2 weeks' notice for a court hearing. If you pay everything including the Summons cost before the hearing, we won’t take further action.

Step 3: Court Hearing

If you don't pay in full, we'll ask the court for permission (a liability order) to recover the money. If this is granted, the court will have decided that you are liable to pay the Council Tax for which you have been billed.

You don't have to go to court if you don't want to. The issue will be dealt with in your absence.

Step 1: Summons Arrival

When you get a Summons, we'll send you a letter explaining what you need to do, with a repayment plan (a Special Arrangement) enclosed.

Step 2: Follow the Special Arrangement 

We will still ask the Court for a liability order, but as long as you keep up to date with the instalments on this arrangement, we won't take any further action.

Need Help? 

If you don’t think you can make the payments on your arrangement, complete the Special Arrangement Request Form.

Once a liability order is granted by the Court, we'll decide on the best way to recover the outstanding amount of Council Tax. We may write to you asking for information to help inform our decision.

The most used methods to enforce the liability order are:

Attachment of earnings

We might ask your employer to deduct a percentage of your wages and send it directly to us. This will continue until the whole charge is paid.

• both you and your employer must tell us if you change employment
• your employer can add £1 each time they make a deduction to cover their own costs.

Benefit deductions

We could ask the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to take away some money from your benefit payments to cover the Council Tax arrears. The money can be taken from benefits which include Income Support, Employment Support Allowance, Job Seekers Allowance and Universal Credit.

Enforcement Agents

We can ask Enforcement Agents to collect Council Tax debt for us. We will always write to inform you that your account will be passed to the enforcement company.

• Enforcement agents can take your belongings to sell and cover what you owe. There's a £75 compliance fee for passing on your case to the Enforcement Agents.
• If the Enforcement Agents decide it is impossible to recover the debt from you then your case will be returned to us, and you may go back to court. An examination will be carried out into your means, and if they consider that the money should have been paid a warrant of commitment may be issued which can place you in prison for up to 3 months.

Home Owners

If you own your home and we cannot recover your outstanding Council Tax by other means, we may apply for bankruptcy or apply for a Charging Order on your property - this could lead to the property being sold to repay the debt.