If you don't pay your Council Tax

If you are unable to make your Council Tax payment, or you are late making your payment, please contact us as soon as possible in order to avoid any recovery action. We may be able to help if you tell us about any problems.

Do not wait for us to send you a reminder notice or court summons.

If you are unable to pay you can compete and return our financial statement form so we can agree a reasonable repayment plan you can afford and prevent us from taking any further action.

If you miss a payment or your payment is late and you have not contacted us to discuss any problems we will take the following action.

Send a Reminder Notice

We send you an initial reminder notice instructing you to make the payment within seven days. If you cannot pay please contact us and let us know. If you complete and send us a financial statement form we can agree a payment arrangement with you.

Court Summons

If you don't pay or contact us after receiving a Reminder Notice we will ask the Magistrate Court to issue a summons to you for a hearing over the unpaid money. If this happens you will be required to pay court costs so an additional £65.60 will be added to your account.

The summons will tell you the date and time of the Magistrate Court hearing and the amount we are looking to recover.

You

Liability Order

If you still don't pay then

• We ask the Magistrates Court to grant us the power to recover the unpaid money from you. If the court decides to grant us this power and you still don't pay then
• We collect the unpaid money from you using a range of methods including attachment of earnings or benefits, enforcement action, and bankruptcy proceedings. You will be liable for any further costs incurred as a result of these methods. Please note if we forward your account to a enforcement agent, the enforcement agent becomes responsible for recovering the debt and we will not usually intervene any further.