Lord Harris of Haringey – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Harris of Haringey on 2015-11-17.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, for each of the last three years, in how many instances people have been imprisoned for defaulting on payment of their council tax.

Lord Faulks

Data showing how many people were imprisoned for non-payment of council tax in 2012, 2013 and 2014 are presented in the table below:

Notes:

These data are sourced from the Libra Management Information System (MIS). As such this data set is not subject to the same levels of quality assurance as national statistics

In extracting this data only offences of complaint for council tax committal application have been included where the court hearing date occurred within each year reported (i.e. between 1 January and 31 December).

It should also be noted that, although committals to prison are reported as occurring within a particular financial year, the non-payment of council tax itself may relate to a previous financial year or even a period covering more than one financial year.

Committal to prison for non-payment of council tax can be challenged through a judicial review in the High Court. The table below shows the number of judicial reviews relating to imprisonment for non-payment of council tax in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and the outcomes.

Notes:

These data were obtained from a manual check of judicial reviews carried out specifically to answer this question.