We have been made aware of an increase in calls relating to customers receiving SPD Review text messages.

The Council Tax Team have confirmed these are genuine messages and that the company sending them is authorised to discuss banking details and the related questions pertaining to customer taxation information.

If you have any customers unsure of these messages please assure them that they are safe to respond to. Of course if there are any further issues please raise via your Senior.

The end of day extract of cash files didn’t run this morning so there was no Sunday cash file uploaded to Open Revenues – Fri/Sat files ran ok. IT have confirm that any outstanding payments for council tax, ndr and sundry debts should be swept up in the overnight file tonight.

Please note following on from yesterday’s notification re Sunday’s files not coming through, the same happened last night and no cash payment files picked up for council tax, ndr and sundry debt this morning.

Capita have been made aware of the issue but so far there’s been no update from IT. This post will be updated as soon as there is more information.

Update 25/10/23: We have received the income files today and it appears to have transactions for the missing dates, balances should now be correct however if there are still missing payments then please pass via your Senior in the first instance and we will investigate.

We ran Non Domestic Rates recovery jobs on Monday. CFH have confirmed these will mail out today. The breakdown and totals are below. They will be dated 19/10/23.

1st Reminders – 124
2nd Reminders – 39
Final Notices (current year) – 9
Final Notices (previous years 2013-22) – 78

Council Tax recovery jobs were run on Monday morning and CFH have just confirmed these will be mailed out today. The breakdown and totals are below. They will be dated 12/10/23.

1st Reminders (2023) – 550
2nd Reminders (2023) – 183
Final Notices (2023) – 117
Final Notices (2013-2022) – 80

Concerning the increasing amounts of customers requesting Housing Support Fund, please be advised that the Household Support Fund was only available in England not Scotland. The Gov.uk website still has information about it on its website so it may be that customers are seeing that but not reading the whole article, ie England only. See here for info.

In Scotland, we have the Scottish Welfare Fund for Crisis Grants and Community Care Grants, info at the webpage here.

We also had the Flexible Food Fund, however this ended in August of this year when the funds ran out. It it worth noting that when the Team were administering the FFF over the past year had many customers who refer to it as the Household Support Fund. There was certainly confusion around what help was available.

All our Flexible Food Fund customers were given information about our Income Maximisation and Money Advice services so maybe a reminder that these services are still available if customers would like advice and assistance with regard to benefit entitlement or debt and arrears. See webpage here.

04/10/2023 - Access is restored to OPEN-Revenues and D360.

The online SWF and DHP forms should also be online again.

03/10/2023 - Due to the need to reboot servers, access to OPEN-Revenues and D360 will be withdrawn at 16:55 tonight. This will also impact SWF and DHP online forms.

Please ensure that you have signed out by that time.

Hopefully access to all systems will quickly be restored and we will confirm to you when you can sign in again.

Taxation Manager James Taylor has made Customer Services aware of some staffing changes within the Ctax & NDR management team. The changes will only impact the support contacts for Team Leaders and the Support Team. However, James has asked that the following support arrangements be reiterated for Customer Service staff:

Support forms should be raised on D360 by Advisors with appropriate access for Ctax/NDR customers who require assistance beyond which can/should realistically be provided by a Customer Service Advisor this includes where a customer requests a call back directly from a member of the Ctax/NDR teams. The service routinely monitor the support queues and can generally arrange a call back to a customer where needed within 48 working hours. However, depending on workloads this can be extended so customers should only ever be asked for preferred time periods during working hours (Monday-Friday 08:45 to 17:00).

Transferring calls to Ctax/NDR staff should only be done in exceptional circumstances as different working styles mean that staff may not always have access to their phones. It’s also worth noting that if a call is transferred essentially this allows a customer to jump the queue which isn’t ideal especially when workloads are as high as they’ve been recently.

If there are any questions or concerns regarding this, Senior Advisors should be the 1st point of contact for Advisors, thank you in advance, Donna CS Team Leader.

Taxation Support has advised that there was no cash posting for Council Tax, Non Domestic Rates or Sundry Debtors this morning. The files on Saturday and Sunday morning went as normal but there were no Capita files received this morning. ICT are investigating.

Update 03/10/23: Council tax, an ndr and also a Sdebt file have been posted today, all are dated 2/10/23. The 3 files of 1/10/23 are still outstanding, IT are investigating.

Update 05/10/23: The outstanding cash payment files dated 1/10/23 for council tax, ndr and sundry debt have been posted. All cash payments should now be up to date.