The questions which have been received from members of the public for this Council meeting are set out in the attached report.  A maximum period of 20 minutes is allocated to this agenda item.

The following question followed by a supplementary question was put and was responded to by the relevant Executive Member:-

6.2    Question from Ahmed Hussain

The council certainly has a duty to collect its taxes & fees either due or unpaid. But is it right to use the council's "Bailiffs" and "Court Orders" inappropriately, too early too soon; if not then why is this council using these resources to often to early? 

Response of Councillor David Edgar, Cabinet Member for Resources

Clearly the Council has a statutory responsibility to collect council tax and there is a statutory process that we need to follow in doing that and I am assured that the use of enforcement agents or bailiffs is only ever taken as a last resort, when all the other options that we have tried to use in order to collect that money have failed. Where we have discretion about the level of court costs enforced and we exercise that discretion and arrangements are kept after the issue of a Liability Order Notice, so we are seeking to increasingly waive court costs to help minimise the impact of the charges made to those who owe the Council money. So I think we do exercise the responsibilities that we have in a way that is humane and takes into account the circumstances of people, but also allows us to do our statutory role in collecting that money which is clearly in the interest of residents of this Council. We need to maximise the council tax that is due to the Council in order to provide the services that we are expected to.

Supplementary question from Ahmed Hussain

I know that you can't comment on individual cases, but these certain cases have been copied in with the Mayor and I will just give you this as an example and I hope you take it as an example which is affecting in a broader context the residents of Tower Hamlets. I have two examples here, one whereby the resident actually being pursued for council tax, the actual person who was liable admitted to it and said he will pay up, but the Council did not acknowledge that and proceed with the landlord and while the landlord was trying to have a meeting with the officers instead of giving a meeting they sent in the bailiffs, despite when they asked “don't send the bailiffs we've got mental health patients in the house it will cause a lot of stress”, still they did so and they took the money, but at no point did they say they would not going to pay it they wanted to sit down and have a chat and tease out where the problem was. The second one is a bit more unique, whereby someone, they charge rate to a businessman and it was found that he was wrongly charged and the Council admitted it. But following that they already started the court procedure and now they are pursuing the £200 for the court procedure and they sent out for the bailiffs, they sent a letter saying that if you don't pay this we will send the bailiffs, so the person paid up. What I am trying to get here is that none of these people said they don't want to pay, they only wanted to sit down with an officer and tweak out where the problems is see where the tease are and if they have to pay they have to pay, if they don't have to pay they don't have to pay. So can you assure us that the Council officers are going to sit down, we did try on several occasions to sit down with the Council, I have got a lot of emails and correspondence to show you, but they would not recognise that they would not even say yes or no we can't sit down, they would just keep on saying pay this, pay this, pay this. Why is it so difficult for Council officers to sit down with the residents? Can they not do that?

Councillor David Edgar’s response to supplementary question

I would certainly hope that where it is appropriate for us to sit down with residents and talk about a payment plan then that is something that we would do. As you say you can't name particular individuals here, but I am clearly happy for you to contact me outside of this meeting and for me to get the details of the particular instances. Maybe they are ones where, in the Council's view, we have a different account and we did what we needed to do, but they may be examples of failings in the process that we normally have, so I am interested in finding out about the individual cases and maybe there are things that we could learn or things that we should have done differently there, but I would need to look at them in detail. So if you are happy to share those details subsequently then I would be happy to consider them, but I would like to say that the Council has both an obligation to its council tax payers and others to maximise the income, it tries to do that I think in a humane way and I am sure that it generally succeeds, and alongside the work that it does in collecting it also makes sure that there is advice given to people about how they can maximise their income, how they can manage debts and the Council's approach is, I think a balanced one where we both try to maximise the income, but also support people when they need support. But do send me the particular cases and I am very happy to sit down and have this conversation about them and see if there are things that we should have done differently or things we can learn.

Question 6.1 was not put due to the absence of the questioner. A Written response would be provided to the question.