As some of you may have heard there appeared to be a news item on MFR relating to the recent corporate direct debit issue and the impact this may have had on Moray Council.

On contacting Taxation Manager, James Taylor, James has advised that this was not a planned advert but instead was a news item in response to questions raised by MFR’s news team to Moray’s PR team.

James was asked by PR along with a number of other service managers as well as the Head of Financial Services to give his comment on the questions raised so that PR could reply to MFR. As a result I personally would have expected information to come to the Support Team via PR which is something I will raise with PR.

James has confirmed my earlier suspicion that this news item makes no difference to the action currently being taken by Customer Services to respond to ongoing customer DD enquiries or the priorities for handling Ctax/NDR/Revs Emails.

Finally, James has advised that as an MFR news item, Moray Council would have no control over how often they choose to replay it.

Donna

Customer Service Team Leader.

Due to the need to perform urgent maintenance to the D360 server, it will be necessary to close this to user access from 07:00 on 6 September 2023. It will be closed for approximately thirty minutes.

User MUST NO log on to D360 (aka W2) from 07:00 on 6 September.

I will inform you when access is restored and you may log on again.

Access to OPEN-Revenues LIVE is unaffected by this work.

The SWF and DHP online forms are also unaffected by this work.

We will shortly be reviewing single person discount cases. This review will be being carried out by a third party company on our behalf. The review letters will be issued on 4th September 2023 and the customer is being asked to reply either by text, online or returning the form to an external address. You should have no contact from the customer (but we all know that this is unlikely)

The Council website has been updated and I would ask that you all read the FAQS so that you are able to answer any questions from the public.

You will find the FAQS on the Moray Council Website under Council Tax; Discount; Single Person’s Discount Review (on left hand menu); FAQS

Or by using the following link

23/08/2023: Please be advised that council tax accounts did not bill again last night. No cash files have been received again this morning and IT are currently investigating. Please bear this in mind when answering customer enquiries.

22/08/2023: - Following on from this issue yesterday regarding the weekend’s missing cash files, please note that there were no cash files from Capital today either. As soon as there is further information we will update this post.

21/08/2023: - Taxation Support didn’t receive the payment files this morning from Capita (files of 20.08.23), so there were no payments posted to Council Tax, NDR or Sundry Debtors. Please be aware when answering queries. ICT and Payments have been contacted to find out what happened and when we expect a resolution.

23/08/2023: Maintenance work on OPEN-Revenues LIVE has been completed. You may sign on to it again and recommence processing. SWF and DHP forms have been brought up again.

22/08/2023:Due to the need to undertake some ‘housekeeping’ on the servers following the encryption of OPEN-Revenues LIVE it will be necessary to withdraw access from that that database at 16:30 on 22/08 (Tuesday). Please ensure that you have signed out at that time We will notify you when you may access OR-LIVE again (I expect it to be later that day).

15/08/2023 17:17: OPEN-Revenues LIVE is updated. You can access it. Please get back to your Support Team if you have any concerns about new functionality.

14/08/2023: Access to OPEN-Revenues-LIVE will be withdrawn from all users at 16:00 on Tuesday (15/08) so that the latest software releases can be loaded. Please ensure you have signed out by 16:00. Do not attempt to access OPEN-Revenues-LIVE until I have confirmed that access had been restored.While this work is being performed, access to W360 and SWF and DHP forms will be unaffected.

22/08/2023: Please see below guidance received from James Taylor regarding the impact of the Direct Debit issue.

Council Tax DD Guidance

If you have a question not answered by the guidance document please continue to raise support forms on W2.

Any questions please pass via your Senior in the first instance.

19/08/2023: Taxation Manager James Taylor has confirmed that the issue affecting the collection of all future Ctax DD’s was resolved on Friday the 18th August which is why the DD’s are now able to be recast. I appreciate that it may seem like a small mercy but James has advised that thankfully the Corporate DD issue was resolved before it affected collection of NDR DD’s which would’ve only added to the current situation being faced by Taxation and Customer Services.

18/08/2023 16:08 - Please be advised that the Direct Debit issue has been resolved, all Direct Debits that are due to be taken from Monday onwards will be taken as normal.

18/08/2023 13:55 - Please see link here to the example Council Tax Bill that is due to be issued for all affected Ctax accounts as a result of the recent non-collection of DD’s issue. This is only an example bill, the actual bills will include DD instalments on them. The bills are due to be run on Monday morning (21/08) and the Taxation Team will notify Support as soon as possible when the total number are known and the issue date, information will be shared on the HUB as soon as it is known.

17/08/2023 15:30 - Following a question raised as to why the Taxation Team's contact numbers were given on the fortnightly affected DD letters and the Revenues number on the weekly letters, Taxation Manager James Taylor has advised "at the time of drafting the fortnightly DD letter on 15/08/2023 for printing that night, James did not know for certain that the weekly DD payers would be affected. As a direct result, due to the impact of the Ctax & NDR reminders already on Customer Services, James took the decision due to the lower numbers of affected accounts to add the Taxation Support contact numbers rather than the Revenues line. Had James known that the weekly DD payers would also be affected the fortnightly and weekly letters would have been issued with the Revenues contact details. James has pointed out that before printing on 15/08/2023 the contact number at the top of the fortnightly letters was changed from 01343 563160 to 01343 563456.

Donna CS Team Leader

17/08/23 11:45 - The below letter has been sent out for Weekly Council Tax Payers

Payment by Weekly Direct Debit

We have received an update that we are unable to collect the monthly 15th of the month direct debits. The payments are not shown on Open Revenues. A letter will be issued to each customer to explain the situation. Once the instalments are recast, a new council tax bill will also be issued. Please let us know if any manual payments are taken so that we can update each account.

We will keep in touch once we know more.

16/08/23 12:40 - The below letter has been sent out for fortnightly Council Tax Payers and is currently being processed to be sent out for weekly payers.

Payment by Fortnightly Direct Debit

As direct debit amounts have been recalculated it is preferred that customers do not make a payment to cover the direct debit not taken as this will mean the direct debit will need to be recalculated again. Of course if people are insistent they want to make a payment then you can do so.

At this moment in time please do not take any payments due for 15th as the Council are in the process of trying to take these. We will let you know as soon as we know if this has been successful or not.

Whilst it is extremely frustrating that this is happening, it is not the taxation teams fault, it is a Council issue affecting all services.

A post was also put onto social media. We were aware of the post but had requested changes be made and a final copy of the message sent to us but this did not arrive so we could not update you on the actual information that was being put out.

Any further updates will be provided as soon as we have them.

10/08/2023 - Due to the below technical issue the council are unable to collect direct debits! This will affect 172 fortnightly payments today and 977 weekly payments tomorrow. We are hoping to have this fixed sooner rather than later but it may also affect the ctax 15th d/ds (3207 accounts) and NDR 21st of the month instalment (712 accounts) and may be next Friday’s weekly instalments

The issue also affects direct debit payments for Fitlife memberships, industrial lease payments and community care payments

The following press release will be sent out on social media for customer information:

Due to technical issues we're currently unable to collect Direct Debits.

This impacts a number of Council Tax payments due today, tomorrow and next week. It also affects Fitlife memberships due to be paid by direct debit over the next week, industrial lease payments and community care payments.

Your services are not affected during this time and you can continue to use your membership/facilities.

Any changes to direct debit amounts and new dates for payments will be communicated to those affected in due course.

We're working on fixing the issue and will update on our social channels once everything is back to normal.

Apologies for the inconvenience caused at this time.

08/08/2023 - I’ve just been made aware by Payments that there is an issue with the bacs licence, which means that Direct Debit Request can be run until further notice. Payments are on the case and will update us as soon as they can.

However the council tax fortnightly tape had already been ran early this morning, therefore 172 accounts are already showing payments but the money will not be debited from customers’ bank accounts as usual this coming Thursday 10/8/23. Can I ask that extra care be taken when discussing payments/balances of fortnightly payers until this issue is resolved, hopefully sooner rather than later.

We will keep you posted as and when we hear more. Thank you.

The letter that has been issued is a standard template used by Taxation when SPAR's default but it seems that the standard default wording was not adjusted by the team before sending. It is anticipated that all accounts with defaulted SPARS as a result of the corporate DD issue will have been issued with their letter. Making any changes to this letter will not make a difference as these have been a one off.

21/08/2023 - the work being undertaken by Civica to encrypt the OPEN-Revenues LIVE database has been successfully concluded.This software operates in the background so you should see no indication of its presence as you move through OPEN-Revenues. Neither will it impact in your processing in any way.You may now log-on to OPEN-Revenues again and recommence processing.

18/08/2023 - Access to all Open Revs Databases are being withdrawn at 13:00 including OR - Train. Please log out. When it is back up we will let you know.

16/08/2023 - Due to the requirement protect the data which is held on OPEN-Revenues-LIVE, Civica will be undertaking a job this weekend to encrypt this data. This will ensure that our database cannot be stolen and interrogated.

To facilitate this encryption, the following steps will be undertaken:

• OPEN-Revenues-LIVE access will be withdrawn from 17:00 on 17/08. All users will be required to have signed out by that time (I will send out an instruction and reminders);
• access to OPEN-Revenues-LIVE will not be restored until data-integrity post-Encryption has been validated;
• OPEN-Portal access to OPEN-Revenues-LIVE will be shut down 17:00 on17/08 and the appropriate message will be posted on the website. (Michael Grant will be ensuring that this is done)
• all imports and exports from OPEN-Revenues-LIVE will be shut down 17:00 on17/08;
• all post CoB jobs will be shut down (e.g. Billing, cash posting);
• all update jobs from DHP and SWF forms will be shut down;
• OPEN-Revenues-LIVE will be copied after CoB tonite and this date will be loaded into OPEN-Revenues TRAIN so that staffers can continue to answer public enquiries (albeit on the basis that this information is not FULLY up-to-date). This database cannot be updated;
• OPEN-Revenues-TRAIN will be available from first thing on 18/08 and can be accessed using your current OR-password;
• a FULL COPY of OPEN-Revenues-LIVE and Taxation and Benefits data integrity jobs will be run post CoB on 17/08;
• post-Encryption Taxation and Benefits data integrity jobs will be re-run and balanced prior to user access being restored;
• only once point (x) has been completed will user access be restored.

Please get back to me if you have any concerns about any aspect of this e-mail, otherwise please distribute amongst your team as you consider appropriate.

Following recent discussions, the Taxation Team Manager (James Taylor) has advised that as a service they are now looking to action the following areas potentially before Annual Billing 2024:

Ctax: 

• Paperless Direct Debits 

• Allowing customers to receive electronic bills (email) without the need to go through MyAccount

NDR: 

• Paperless Direct Debits

 • Allowing customers to receive Bills electronically (this isn’t something currently available to NDR customers) 

• Allowing customers to receive electronic bills (email) without the need to go through MyAccount

The taxation team are currently in discussion with their system providers and ICT as to how this can be achieved and James has raised work logs for the Support Team on SharePoint to ensure that consideration is given to Customer Services for if and when script changes are required.

In order for the Support Team to understand the script changes that may be required, the Support Team need to understand the Revenues scripts and how these are used. As a result, Emma has been spending time shadowing Dottie on a Wednesday afternoon (so far on 09/08/23 & 16/08/23) which she’s found really useful.

One area that Emma and I have agreed to add to the list for review is how the Ctax matching process is handled as this is an area that I’ve never been comfortable sitting with Advisors. However, that said nothing is likely to change with this anytime soon but please rest assured if it does, you will be the first to know.

Please be advised that Benefit Support have confirmed this morning (16/08/2023) that there was an issue at educations end where the entitlement didn’t carry forward to the new school year. Education have been given a list of all children entitled to free school meals, so should be sorted as soon as possible.

CCDAVA password is being updated to:ccdava2023aug. The Lagan SWF script has been updated with the new password.

Recovery run carried out on 7 August. The following letters are dated 10th August 2023 and should be issued by CFH today.

Council Tax 1st Reminders (2023) – 402
Council Tax 2nd Reminders (2023) - 148Council Tax Final Notices (2023) – 116
Council Tax Final Notices (2013-2022) – 171
Council Tax Attachment of Benefit Letters (2023) – 68

There have been 194 Council Tax accounts (2023/24 debts) passed to Scott & Co and their letters will be issued today

Non Domestic Rates 1st Reminders (2023) – 1213
Non Domestic Rates Final Notices (2023) – 5
Non Domestic Rates Final Notices (2013-2022) – 150

The Taxation Support Team are preparing NDR reminders and have done a pre-run to find that there will be roughly 1000 reminders to be issued. A sample on them was taken and it found that about 75% are being issued a reminder as they have not completed an SBBS form.

Taxation Support will notify Customer Services Support when accurate issue date and volumes are known.