We welcomed the opportunity to respond to this consultation on improving enforcement of council tax. The current regulatory collection framework is designed in a way that incentivises rapid recovery, which too often leads to inappropriate escalation to formal enforcement activity before sufficient support has been offered. This can deepen hardship and make debt problems worse. We therefore strongly believe that pre-enforcement statutory steps that introduce more support, flexibility and empathy into the debt collection and enforcement journey would make a big difference.
We were very pleased to see central government commit earlier this year to extend the timeline before a local authority can demand the full year’s bill and seek a liability order from April 2027. Importantly, to fully maximise the potential of this timeline change, there must be concerted, coordinated activity to improve the quality of interactions between local authorities and residents in council tax arrears. This includes, among other things, enhanced requirements for councils to:
- Offer sustainable repayment plans which reflect households’ actual affordability positions;
- Effectively refer residents to free money and debt advice where needed; and
- Proactively consider debt write-off where there’s no realistic prospect that the individual will be able to repay in full.
While this additional consultation contains some constructive proposals – including a welcome examination of how to improve the timing, content and framing of communications from councils to residents who have fallen behind – we believe that MHCLG is currently being too restrictive in its vision of what a new set of statutory pre-enforcement steps, as put forward by the department in April 2026, could entail.
We are therefore continuing to advocate for a more comprehensive statutory protocol for council tax debt collection, which would require councils to take certain steps before charging the annual bill, seeking a liability order or taking enforcement action This statutory protocol, alongside the welcome extension of the collection timeline, would constitute a more coherent package of reforms – focused not only on the important move to give people more time to repay, but also to bring about changes which emphasise preventative, early and sustainable engagement, as well as to raise the bar on the quality of interactions and support more widely.
We recognise that local authorities are themselves operating in a challenging environment and council tax funds vital services in their communities. Local authorities should be closely supported by central government to ensure that they have enough funding and resources to make these policy changes happen quickly and deliver consistent, good collection practice.