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Easter bin collections

All bin collections following a bank holiday will now take place one day late from 29 March to 6 April. See our Easter Bin Collection page for further details.

Online and telephone payments

Due to a fault, our online and telephone payment services are currently unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience caused while our service provider works to fix the problem.

Difficulties making payments?

Show all parts of this guide

1. What can you do if you cannot afford to pay?

As soon as you realise you cannot make a payment to us please contact us using our Council Tax Enquiry form.

We can help you in the following ways:

  • Making sure you have received all the discounts, exemptions, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Support you are entitled to
  • Making sure you have the best payment plan for your needs (this includes payment dates and payment method)
  • Helping you to budget
  • Offering you access to independent debt advice
  • Finding out if other organisations can help you with other debt repayments
  • If you miss payments to us we will send you a reminder, please get in touch with us straight away if you are having difficulty paying us. We will talk to you and find the best solution for you.

Not paying and not contacting us can become serious and make your debt bigger if costs are put on to the amount you owe us for the legal action we have to take.

Ask us about Direct Debit - it is the easy way for you to pay us

To enable us to help you

List all the money you have coming in.  Don't forget to include yours and your partner's take home pay, benefits, income from people who live with you, and regular income such as work's pensions or maintenance.

Then list where your money goes.  Your rent and mortgage are the most important bills followed by fuel and water.  Council Tax payments take priority over debts such as credit cards, catalogues and loans.

Using the household budgeting tool will help you to see how much you can offer to pay and it will help us to come to an arrangement with you. We also prefer you to pay your Council Tax account by Direct Debit so please contact us to arrange this if you do not already pay by this method.

If you find it difficult to discuss your arrears with the Collection Team yourself, you can authorise another person to speak to us on your behalf.

Complete and return a Authorisation to discuss form

 

If you do not pay your Council Tax we can take further steps to recover the amount owing.

See Council Tax Arrears Information

So if you are struggling, don’t delay, contact us using our Council Tax Enquiry form. Remember to give your council tax account reference number.