Council tax case studies
Norwich City Council and Norfolk County Council
2008/09
Norwich City carried out a joint working initiative with Norfolk County Council to investigate their NFI council tax to electoral register matches.
The councils investigated over 1500 matches and identified nearly 850 households who were wrongly claiming the 25 per cent single person discount on their council tax bills. As a result the city council is recovering a total of £280,542, as well as preventing further losses being incurred had those erroneous discounts continued.
Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council
2008/09
By following up NFI matches between council tax and electoral registration data Solihull MBC identified a significant number of residents who had been receiving single person discount inappropriately. The council has not only withdrawn over £160,000 of discounts, but it has also investigated how long the discounts had been awarded wrongly. As a result it found that many residents had been wrongly receiving discounts for at least a year, some for over five years. These further investigations have enabled Solihull to identify an additional £90,000 for recovery.
Haringey Council
2008/09
The NFI’s council tax to electoral register data matching is primarily designed to identify inappropriate single person discounts. Haringey Council has not only found over 500 discounts that had been wrongly awarded but in some of these cases it has also identified significant overpayments of housing benefit. This has resulted in a number of individual cases where combined benefit and discount overpayments of between £2,000 and £5,000 are being recovered. This is a good example of council departments working together on NFI matches and has significantly contributed to increasing the council’s tax base by nearly £1m from this exercise so far.
London Borough of Brent
2008/09
As part of their investigations into their NFI Council Tax Single Person Discount matches the London Borough of Brent reviewed cases and visited some properties to confirm residency. As a result the council identified 1200 people who were wrongly claiming Single Person Discount, some fraudulently. They have identified council tax underpayments, for 2009/10 and previous years, of £800,000, which are now being recovered. It is also estimated that the Council Tax base has been increased by over £300,000.
A number of the matches highlighted related to local government employees. In one case, a relatively senior employee had failed to declare that he had been living with another person for three years. He had also failed to pay his Council Tax during this period so was in arrears. The single person discount obtained was in excess of £1,000, and is currently being recovered. Enquiries made as a result of the match led to the employee being dismissed for gross misconduct. As a result of this work the NFI Team are piloting this match at a number of Local Authorities. If this is successful it will be rolled out across the country.