in order to collect the money, to even take away their belongings in lieu of unpaid debt, although such action was suspended during the first five months through the pandemic. Another approach taken by local authorities was the deduction of benefits of people to clear their arrears, and according to The Guardian, more than 115,000 households in England have been subjected to this approach.
“These statistics lay bare the devastating impact that council tax debts have on hundreds of thousands of people. The default position for too many councils seems to be to recover debt from benefits rather than negotiating with the person to agree an affordable repayment plan,” the anti-poverty charity Z2K’s chief executive Anela Anwar said. “On top of that, the postcode lottery of council tax reduction schemes, combined with punitive recovery powers, means thousands of people end up in a well of debt that it is impossible to climb out of.”
Accordingly, she urged the government to reinstate a fully funded national system of council tax support, in order to assist families caught in the grip of poverty.
Meanwhile, local authorities claim that several support measures were provided to households during the early stages of the pandemic, and therefore had to resume collecting the funds that were outstanding prior to the global health crisis. According to a spokesperson for the Bradford council, all low-income families in the district were granted a three-month tax holiday during the pandemic, and were also awarded £100 against their tax bills.
“As we came out of the first lockdown we had to catch up on our collection activity and, in common with other authorities, we issued a number of attachment requests to those with arrears dating from before the pandemic started,” the spokesperson said.
