Local councillors and MPs

Much debt is payable to local or national government. This includes council tax, income tax, VAT and rent. The statutory powers which the state has given itself to enforce these debts are considerable, so they are all priority debts. However, depending on the client’s circumstances, some of these debts may not always need to be treated as a priority debt, so the client’s situation may mean that diligence available to the creditor will have little or no impact on them. In addition, as government debts, they are subject to scrutiny by elected members – ie, councillors, MSPs and MPs. This can provide a powerful method of ensuring that the state’s powers are not used in too draconian a fashion.

Elected members are often not aware of the measures being used by their officers to collect debts. For instance, many local councillors are unaware of the extent to which their authority uses enforcement agents (sheriff officers) and, once briefed by an advice agency, can raise this as an issue and change the way these debts are collected.