Cllr Randal Brew, Cabinet Member for Finance at Birmingham City Council, has written the following letter in response to today’s Birmingham Mail front page lead story on recent Council tax court cases…
“As the Cabinet Member responsible for the collection of Council Tax in the city, I feel I must respond on behalf of the City Council to the issues you have highlighted in today’s Evening Mail.
“Two years ago we took the decision, to move the payment date from 15th of each month to the 1st of the month for people who wish to pay their accounts by any available methods apart from direct debit.
“Efficiency initiatives of this nature are one of the reasons why we have been able to keep annual council tax increases in Birmingham below the national average for the past four years.
“The decision was widely publicised and we wrote to all customers well in advance to alert people to the change.
“At the same time, in order to encourage take up of direct debit, which is not only the most secure but also the most cost effective method of payment, we decided to retain a choice of payment dates for customers electing to pay in this way. The choices include 1st, 8th, 15th or indeed the 28th of each month.
“While I acknowledge that both Mrs Cox and Mrs Lichfield were making regular payments they were making them late on each occasion and both customers had been sent two separate reminders and a final notice and as a result the summonses were correctly issued.
“At any of these points we would have been more than happy to set up direct debit arrangements on one of the available dates.
“There are around 420,000 council tax properties within the City and we, therefore have to rely on a degree of automation to remind people where their payments have not been received by the due date.
“There was however no computer error in the issuing of these summonses and we do not incorrectly summons thousands of people to court.
“As you are aware the City Council faces over the next four years substantial challenges in terms of funding.
“If we failed to exhaust all efforts in collection of council tax, we would rightly attract criticism both from your newspaper and more importantly from our customers, the residents of Birmingham.”
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