Have stumbled across a number of issues with council tax in general as a result of bailiffs at the door and just wonder on a few questions.....

The fee for a liability order is around £90 to £100 ish. It seems to vary from area to area. Is that fee a fee that the court charges and recieves , is it a fee that the council charge and they receive or split 2 ways. If if its the latter, does anyone know what amount the court actualy charges for a liability order ?

As a rough guide it costs the Council approx £3 to submit the application to the Court. The Council will then argue the rest of your £90/£100 is made up of charges associated with issuing all the paperwork - cost of paper, envelope, postage, staff costs and so on. In reality it is a nice little earner for them as they may have in excess of 100 orders done at the same time. You could always FOI your Council for details.

PT

Yep - £3. I must try and get some later figures, but for info, in 2007, councils in England earned themselves in excess of £200million pounds in liability order fees. So it's a nice little earner that are aren't likely to give up and though they have tremendous discression in how they handle arrears, a big cheer goes up in the office when someone is a day late so they can issue and get more beer money for the £200,000 pa pay of the Council boss.

Yep - £3. I must try and get some later figures, but for info, in 2007, councils in England earned themselves in excess of £200million pounds in liability order fees. So it's a nice little earner that are aren't likely to give up and though they have tremendous discression in how they handle arrears, a big cheer goes up in the office when someone is a day late so they can issue and get more beer money for the £200,000 pa pay of the Council boss.

PT