NEW FIGURES have revealed that over 12,000 people have been summoned to court over non-payment of council tax in Bolton over the last 12 months.

The findings, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that while no summonses were issued between April and August 2020, numbers shot up from the following September onwards with a total of 9,064 summonses over the 2020/21 financial year and 3,432 so far for 2021/22.

This comes with people's livelihoods across the town having been hit particularly hard by the coronvirus crisis.

Responding to the findings, Urban Outreach Bolton CEO Dave Bagley said: "I think the local economic difficulties that will be created by Covid are yet to be fully realised and this is one of them.

"This is clearly a lot of people and a lot of households."

He added: "The thing we're fully conscious of is what will happen as we come out of this, how do we recover from something that's had such an economic hit?"

Research from the Money Advice Trust showed that over seven million people across the UK are worried they will not be able to afford their council tax bills over the next year due to the pressures of the pandemic.

The trust's Cost of Covid report reveals that, as a result of the crisis, one in nine adults in Britain have fallen behind on essential bills or personal credit, while one in eight have had to use credit to pay for bills, including council tax, or household goods.

As the 12,000 figures shows, this crisis has proven particularly acute in Bolton.

Mr Bagley said: "People who are struggling should reach out, they shouldn't see this as a pride thing or a sign of failure, they should reach out and ask for help.

"There is not fault here, Covid is guilty, people are not."

Mr Bagley has also said that Bolton Council still puts a significant amount of investment into supporting those who are struggling, while the authority itself says that it has a number of advisory services in place.

A council spokesperson said: “We only issue a summons for the non-payment of council tax after we have sent both a reminder notice and a final notice and the customer hasn’t paid or contacted us to make an arrangement to pay.

“We are focussed on helping residents at an early stage to avoid them getting into arrears.

“Where people are struggling to pay their council tax, we encourage them to get in touch with our customer services team on 01204 331599 to see how we can help them to maintain their payments by making affordable arrangements to pay.

“In addition to this we also have a local welfare provision which helps people by providing food parcels and discretionary housing payments to help with council tax and rent."

More information can be found by calling Bolton Council's Money Skills Service on 01204 332916 or by visiting https://www.bolton.gov.uk/benefits/help-crisis-emergency.

Anyone struggling with their finances can also seek help from the Citizens Advice Bureau: https://www.cabb.org.uk/.

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