Attachment of Jobseekers Allowance, Income Support, Employment & Support Allowance & Pension Credits
Attachment of Earnings Employee information
Attachment of Earnings Employer information
Bailiff information
Bankruptcy
Charging Order
Committal to prison
Contact details and times
Financial Information form information
Summons Information – see the downloadable document on the right
Attachment of Jobseekers Allowance, Income Support, Employment & Support Allowance or Pension credits
We can make deductions of approximately £3.40 per week for council tax from the above benefits. We do not need your permission to do this if a liability order has been granted at court.
The deductions will continue until the council tax you owe is paid in full, or you stop receiving benefits. If you stop receiving benefits and the debt is still unpaid, you need to contact us to make an arrangement to pay straight away.
Attachment of earnings employee information
If you have received an attachment of earnings order, your employer will deduct a set percentage from your wage to pay your council tax until it is paid in full. We do not need your permission to do this if a liability order has been granted at court.
Neither your employer nor the council decide the amount to be deducted - it depends on how much you earn. In all cases, the more you earn, the more will be deducted. The rate of deductions is set by central Government.
We will not cancel these attachments once they are set up unless you can prove you are having severe financial difficulties. If you believe this applies to you, you must bring original documents proving all your income and outgoings to our counter at Great George Street during office hours. This includes bank statements bills and mortgage statements.
You then need to show us that after you have paid for essential things, the attachment(s) will mean that you cannot make ends meet. We can only take account of essential spending, not spending on things you could manage without. We may then agree to cancel one or both of your attachments. However, you will still have to pay your council tax, and we will have to agree how you are going to do that.
Attachment of earnings employer information
If you have received an attachment of earnings order for an employee, you must use the table enclosed with the Order to deduct the appropriate percentage from your employee’s wage. You can deduct an extra £1 for each deduction to cover your administrative costs. You must then send the payment to us. Our address is provided in the order.
You may receive a maximum of two orders for council tax arrears for one employee at any one time. Where two orders are in force, you need to deduct the appropriate percentage for the earliest order first. Then, you need to deduct the appropriate percentage for the second order, depending on how much wage is left after the first deduction. The second order does not replace the first and both deductions must be made at the same time until they are paid.
If you receive a third order you should not apply this but contact us instead.
You must send payments to us within 19 days of the end of the month when the employee was paid. If you do not do this it is a criminal offence and you can be fined up to £1000.
You must tell us within 14 days if the employee named on the order does not work for you or has left your employment. Please call us if you have any queries on 0113 398 4732.
Bailiff information
We appreciate that visits from bailiffs can cause distress and we will only use them where we have no other way of getting payment from you. We will not normally use bailiffs if:
- you have agreed a payment arrangement with us
- you are receiving Employment & Support Allowance, Income Support or Jobseekers Allowance
- you have provided your employment details
There are four private bailiff companies who work on behalf of us and they are all members of professional bodies such as the Enforcement Services Association and the Institute of Revenues, Rating and Valuation. Every bailiff employed holds a court certificate and is properly trained to behave in a professional manner. They are allowed by law to charge certain fees and the amount charged must be agreed with us.
If the bailiffs come across potentially vulnerable people such as the elderly or seriously ill we have asked them stop taking action and to inform us straight away. In most other cases we will not be involved - once the bailiff has contacted you we expect you to deal directly with them.
The four companies we use are:
Rossendales
Wavell House
Holcombe Road
Helmshore
Rossendale
BB4 4NB
Tel: 0844 7013980
Fax: 01706 831126
email: info@rossendales.com
Jacobs Ltd (Certified Bailiffs)
4 Europa Boulevard
Conway Park
Birkenhead
Wirral
CH41 4PE
Tel: 0151 650 4800
Fax: 0151 650 4999
email: leeds@jacobsbailiffs.co.uk
Marston Group Ltd
PO BOX 317
Sale
M33 7WJ
Tel: 0870 787 9555
Fax: 01992 703 703
email: customer.care@marstongroup.co.uk
Equita Ltd
Central Payments Office
PO Box 30
Erith
DA8 1ZJ
Tel: 0845 6010011 or 0870 5581581
Fax: 0161 832 0372
email: info@equita.co.uk
You should contact us directly if you wish to question what bailiffs can and cannot legally do, or if you have a complaint about a bailiff’s behaviour or the costs you have been charged.
Bankruptcy
If you owe council tax of more than £750, we may decide to take bankruptcy action against you. As you could lose your home and possessions to pay off your debt this is a serious course of action. We usually only take this step if we have tried other ways to get payment from you but have not been successful. We do not want to make people bankrupt and would much prefer to agree a payment arrangement with you.
If we decide to take bankruptcy action against you, we will write to you first giving details of your debts and explaining how bankruptcy will affect you. If you receive a letter like this from us please contact us straight away to make an arrangement to pay.
If we do not hear from you or receive full payment we will send you a “statutory demand”. This is a very important document which you must not ignore. You should take legal advice if necessary or contact us.
If you do not act in line with the “statutory demand” within 21 days we will serve you with a bankruptcy petition. This will be followed by a hearing at the county court. At that hearing, we will ask for our legal costs to be payable by you.
The legal costs and the costs of employing an insolvency practitioner can be expensive and are often more than the council tax debt. If we write to you about bankruptcy, it is in your own interests to either pay in full or agree a payment arrangement with us and keep to it exactly.
Charging Orders
If you owe at least £1000 for Council Tax, we can place a “charging order” on your property.
If we decide to do this, we will first write to you giving details of your debt and explaining how a charging order would affect you. Please contact us without delay at this stage to make an arrangement to pay.
If we do not hear from you or receive full payment, we will apply to the county court to place a charging order on your property. This means that, when the property is sold, the charge must be paid before any money can be paid over to you. We will ask the court to include our legal costs, which can be very expensive. It is in your own interests to pay all the council tax outstanding before we apply to court for a charging order.
The county court can give us permission to force a sale of the property so that your unpaid council tax and costs can be paid. We would not normally ask for this.
We would much prefer to receive your payment rather than ask for a charging order owing to the high legal costs usually passed on to you. We will only apply for a charging order if we have tried other ways of getting payment from you but have not been successful.
Committal to prison
When we have tried to collect your Council Tax by all other methods, including using bailiffs, we can ask the Magistrates court to send you to prison for not paying. If the Magistrates court believe that you either refused to pay or could have paid but did not, they can send you to prison for up to three months.
If we have sent you a committal information form you must fill this in and either pay in full or make an offer of payment. If you do not pay in full or return the form, we will send you a committal summons. This will give you a date and time to attend Leeds Magistrates court. You will have to pay costs for this summons.
The magistrates will look at your income and spending and decide if you are, or have been, in a position to pay your council tax. The magistrates can order you to make payments or send you to prison for up to three months.
If you do not come to court, we will ask the magistrates for a warrant for your arrest. You will be charged for this. An enforcement officer will arrest you and take you to court. Again the magistrates can order you to make payments or send you to prison for up to three months.
In this serious situation it is clearly in your own interests to pay your council tax in full. If you cannot, and the magistrates order you to make payments you must pay exactly as ordered. If you do not you can be sent to prison. We do not wish to send people to prison and will only take this action as a last resort.
Contact details and times
By email : ctax.recovery@leeds.gov.uk
By fax: 0113 247 5926 or 0113 247 5874
By phone: 0113 398 4732
Opening times*: Monday to Thursday 8:30am to 5pm, Friday 8:30am to 4:30pm
* If you cannot call during these times, please ring and leave us a message. Please speak clearly and slowly and leave your full name, a daytime telephone number, your council tax account number and the address of the property you’ve been charged for. We will call you back as soon as we can.
Financial information form information
If you receive a financial information form from us you must complete it fully, including your work details and send it back to us within 14 days. If you do not return it only complete some of the details or give false information you can be fined up to £1000 and get a criminal record.
If you cannot complete it in time or need time to gather all the information please contact us.
If you do not return the form, we can either use bailiffs to collect your debts, or send you a summons for not returning the form. You would have to pay the bailiffs fees, or run the risk of getting a criminal record. For more information on bailiffs, please see the section Bailiff information.
Summons Information
Please see the document under downloads at the top right of this page.