Council tax debt is a frequent issue that people bring to the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) each year. It’s the most common type of debt advice we provide across the Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) network and has been for more than a decade. Our advisers treat this as a priority debt, due to the speed and scale of debt recovery. And as council tax debt is usually accompanied by other debts, it is often a red flag about wider financial difficulties.

It’s an issue that impacts both council taxpayers and councils alike. The process to recover arrears can put people in a worse financial position and the council can lose much-needed income. Councils can also find themselves spending money chasing arrears that have little or no chance of recovery because people simply don’t have the funds to pay.

Something had to be done to tackle this problem. So a few years........

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