What is a liability order?

A liability order is a court order from the magistrates’ court. It gives us extra powers to collect your council tax arrears. We ask the court for this order if you don’t pay what you owe us after we send you a summons.

A liability order means the council can:

• ask you for details about your money
• take money from your wages or benefits
• send enforcement agents, also called bailiffs, to collect the debt
• apply to make you bankrupt
• put a charging order on your home if you owe at least £1,000 for council tax. This means that if you sell your home, you must pay your council tax debt first
• ask the court to send you to prison.

Find out more about recovery action and additional charges

What happens at court

The council representative will tell the court how much council tax is unpaid, when the reminder notices and summons were issued, and the debt that is still owed. If you are wanting to discuss a payment arrangement, we recommended that you make every effort to contact us before the court hearing.

At the court hearing, the court checks that we followed the correct procedures when trying to collect the debt, and that the debt is correct.

If you do not attend the hearing the court will grant the liability order in your absence, unless you have paid the arrears in full along with the costs.

You must attend if you want to challenge the liability order. There are only a few ‘valid defences’ for challenging a liability order, such as:

• you have already paid the debt within the time limit given on the last reminder or final notice we sent you
• you are not the person responsible for paying council tax - your name should not be on the council tax bill
• your property is not on the official valuation list
• the bills and reminders were not sent to you (this is different from you not getting them). 

You can speak to the court about these ‘valid defences’. You will need to provide evidence to back up what you say. We recommend that you get your own independent legal advice and get a solicitor to speak for you.

The court cannot take into account any other reasons why you have not paid, even if you have been unable to pay. They cannot change the law and they must apply it as it stands.

If you think you have a 'valid defence' contact us as soon as possible.

Broken arrangement

If you miss a payment after you start paying what the summons says, we will take action. We will send you a broken arrangement letter. The letter will tell you that you must pay the full amount you owe within 14 days.

Arrangement form

If you cannot pay what you owe we might still be able to give you a payment plan. We can also suggest other ways of paying your debt that might make it easier for you to manage.

The easiest and quickest way to do this is to:

• sign into your online council tax account
• complete the arrangement form to make an offer of repayment.

Other options

You can also:

• complete and return the council tax arrangement options form which was sent with your summons, or
• contact us as soon as possible so we can talk about your situation and work to prevent more action:

Financial information form

At any stage of recovery we can ask you for your financial information. You are legally required to provide it. We will send you a form to complete or, if you have an online council tax account, you can complete the form online:

You must:

• include your work details on the form
• send it back to us within 14 days.

You can be fined up to £1,000 and get a criminal record if you:

• do not return it
• only complete some of the details
• give false information.

If you need more time to gather all the information to fill it in, contact us as soon as possible to let us know:

Dispute a liability order

If you believe a liability order has been granted when it shouldn’t have been, you can ask us to investigate. Reasons for disputing a liability order include:

• the outstanding amount owed was paid in full, and received by the council, before the summons issue date

• you are not the person who is responsible for paying council tax

• you are exempt from paying council tax.