Difficulty paying
Please contact us immediately if you are going to have any difficulty keeping up with your Council Tax instalments. Either telephone 01595 744683 or email Recovery@shetland.gov.uk.
If you do fall behind with your payments, reminders will be issued as follows:
First Reminder
Once an account has been identified as having failed to make an instalment as requested, we will issue a first reminder stating the amount of arrears.
Where there is no payment forthcoming within seven days, or the payment received is insufficient to cover the amount of the reminder issued, the tax payer loses the right to pay by instalments and the full year’s Council Tax becomes payable, a Final Notice would then be issued to that effect.
Second Reminder
If the Council Tax payer brings their account up to date after the issue on the first reminder but subsequently fails to make another payment within the financial year a second reminder will be issued. If they fail to bring the instalments up to date on this occasion, or bring their instalments up to date but fall behind for a third time within the financial year, the tax payer loses the right to pay by instalments and the full year’s Council Tax becomes payable, and a Final Notice would then be issued to that effect.
Final Notice
The Final Notice is now issued demanding full payment of all outstanding Council Tax in respect of the particular financial year and informing the Council Tax payer of our intention to make an application for Summary Warrant unless full payment is received within a period of 14 days from the date of the Final Notice.
If you are not in a position to do this please contact us on 01595 744683 to make an affordable instalment arrangement.
Summary Warrant
If you do not pay the amount shown on the final notice the debt will proceed to Summary Warrant stage and an extra 10 per cent will be added to the debt.
If you do not pay the amount shown or make a suitable arrangement the debt can be passed to the Sheriff Officers who have the powers to arrest bank accounts or arrest wages if payment is not made.
Please contact us on 01595 744683 or email Recovery@shetland.gov.uk to make an affordable instalment arrangement as soon as you are having any difficulty in paying the your Council Tax instalments.