Agenda item

The Director of Finance submits a report that details progress made in collecting debts raised by the Council during 2016/17, together with debts outstanding and brought forward from the previous year. The report also sets out details of debts written off under delegated authority that it has not been possible to collect after reasonable effort and expense. The Overview Select Committee is recommended to consider the overall position presented within this report and make any observations it sees fit.

The Director of Finance submitted a report that detailed progress made in collecting debts raised by the Council during 2016-17, together with debts outstanding and brought forward from the previous year.

The Chair reported that the Finance Task Group had expressed concerns that the level of outstanding debt for council tax at 31 March 2017 was £13m and questioned whether all possible action was being taken to collect that money. The City Mayor suggested that rather than looking at a figure of what was outstanding on a particular date, a better measure was what was uncollectable and written off. The City Mayor referred to a graph which showed the written off figure and its percentage of the total of outstanding debt and asked that this graph be included in future Income Collection Reports.

The Director of Finance stated that the Council would continue to pursue the debt that was carried forward at the end of the financial year. In some cases, there were outstanding debts carried forward from previous years as payment arrangements were calculated on what would be affordable and could be spread over several years.

The Chair expressed strong concern that between 1 April 2016 and 31 March 2017, £7.1m of new overpayments of housing benefit had been identified.  The City Mayor explained that the obligation was on the claimant to inform the authority of any changes in their circumstances, but this did not always happen. In some cases, people chose not to inform the authority of a change of circumstances but often people did not realise that a change might affect their housing benefit, and the matter only came to light when a new claim was submitted. This was a failure of the system. The City Mayor offered to provide Members with comparisons between Leicester and other Local Authorities.

Councillor Khote expressed concern that some of her constituents had complained that they had notified the Council of a change of circumstances but officers at the Council had taken a year or more, to action the change. The Director of Finance responded that there was a target to process a change of circumstance within 13 days. She was not aware of any such issue as reported by Councillor Khote, but asked for the details of those cases to be forwarded onto her and she would investigate each case.

Councillor Khote further reported that her constituents had complained that they had been into Customer Services but there were no staff there who spoke the same language. The Director responded that this should not have been a problem as the customer service hubs had translation lines. The City Mayor asked for the names and details of the constituents who had reported these problems; he would treat the issues with sensitivity and look into their concerns. A suggestion was made that prompts and reminders be given to recipients of housing benefit, reminding them of their responsibility to contact the Council when there was a change of circumstances.  Members heard that in the near future, this was unlikely to be such an issue because housing benefit would only be given to senior citizens in receipt of a pension. This was because the universal credit programme would soon be fully implemented in Leicester and would be administered by the Department of Work and Pensions.

A Member referred to the amount of insolvent, bankrupt and liquidated debts that had been written off and sought further information on those businesses. He asked whether the Council provided any marketing or tutoring support to help those businesses to thrive. He also questioned how this figure compared to that in other comparable Local Authorities. The Director of Finance responded that this probably related to small and medium type businesses and she would ask the Revenue and Benefits Business Manager to respond.

AGREED:

                   that the overall position presented in the report be noted.