13 June 2023
Your request
I would like to know how much money, if any has been recovered using bailiffs (debt collection agencies) in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, broken down to the amount by year, for the following debts:
council tax arrears
parking penalty charges
Housing Benefit overpayments.
I would also like to see the policy documents regarding the use of bailiffs and the details of any complaints lodged against the council's use of bailiffs.
If possible I would also like to know how much the council is spending on contracts with debt collection agencies
Our response
Council Tax Arrears
Please see spreadsheet attached for amounts recovered. Please see attached policy documents.
Regarding your request for complaint details, I can confirm that we have reviewed your request but consider that to comply with the request would exceed the cost/time limit specified by s12 FOIA.
Section 12 (cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit)
12. — (1) Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.
In this instance, we have decided that the process of determining whether the information is held will exceed the Appropriate Limit as provided by The Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
The Appropriate Limit applies to costs/time the Council reasonably expects to use in carrying out the following activities to comply with your request:
- Determine whether the information is held
- Locating the information or documents containing the information
- Retrieving such information or documents
- Extracting the information from the document
The Appropriate Limit is currently set at £450 which is the equivalent to 18 hours of work at £25 per hour.
As you have not specified which details, and because the Council does not have a category for complaints made about bailiffs / the data is not centrally collected, it would require a manual trawl of all complaints lodged over the six years, and as such it is estimated that to retrieve the information for this request would exceed the Appropriate Limit.
Please note this applies to any bailiff complaint regardless of the department.
In accordance with Section 17 FOIA this letter represents a Refusal Notice for this part of the request.
Should you wish to redefine or shorten your request then please resubmit another request to us and we will consider if we can respond. For example, you may shorten the time period from several years to weeks or days, and specify exactly which complaint information / details you wish. Please note this is advice offered as per S16 of the Freedom of Information Act (duty to provide advice and assistance) and does not guarantee the information can be provided.
The Revenues administration which comprises of all aspects of the administration including Enforcement Agents is contracted out to Capita and is therefore included in the total contract price. Lambeth do not pay Enforcement Agents for their services as there fees are fixed (see EA Policy). Enforcement Agents acting on behalf of the Council are bound by CIVEA guidance.
Parking penalty charges
Please see below the Parking PCN information received by the Bailiffs.
The data is provided by Financial Year
Financial Year Amount Bailiff’s received (£)
2018/19 1,391,502
2019/20 1,478,407
2020/21 1,606,717
2021/22 1,129,258
2022/23 2,299,831
2023 (Apr-May) 72,011
We don’t have a formal policy for the use of bailiffs around parking.
All reputable bailiffs have their own policies about how they operate. Please refer to the link below that has sub links to our bailiffs websites which explains that we work with reputable bailiffs.
£0 spent on contracts with debt collection agencies; this is because Enforcement Agents recover the money owed to Lambeth with their revenue coming from the fees added through the debt collection process.
Housing benefit overpayments
Housing Benefit does not use bailiffs therefore the amount is £0 for all years and N/A applies to the remainder of the queries.