Lismore City Council will recommence debt recovery on unpaid rates, put on hold due to the COVID pandemic

Debt recovery was put on hold due to COVID, but that’s about to end.

Lismore City Council will resume debt recovery on overdue rates.

Lismore City Council is set to reintroduce debt recovery processes in mid-June for unpaid council bills, put on hold last year because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The council resolved in March 2020 to make amendments to their debt recovery action, to ease the burden for those impacted by the pandemic, but further restrictions on debt recovery were imposed by the Office of Local Government (OLG).

In April 2020, the OLG determined no interest could be charged on overdue 2020/21 rates until December 31, 2020, increasing to 7 per cent from January 1 to June 30.

The OLG has not issued notice to extend the regulation beyond March 25 and the council voted to allow action to recommence as per the current Rates and Water Debt Recovery policies.

Those policies were amended at the March 2020 council meeting, where the following resolutions were made to amend the Debt Collection Procedures and Hardship Policy.

•. Extend the commencement of interest accruals on overdue notices by 60 days

• No new legal action (no action from Demand letters that have already issued and no new

Demand letters that would threaten legal action)

• Continue with current action at least to a Judgement stage to protect the legal costs that

have already accrued (legal costs can be contested through the court until judgment is

completed)

• Set a minimum per week for arrangements, and continue to monitor them

• Continue to send Reminder letters from the council.

While Debt Recovery Action will recommence, it would not take place until after the 2020/21 4th Instalment Reminder letter were issued and became overdue in mid-June 2021.

This recommendation provided ratepayers with a further two months, from the date of the report, to pay any overdue balance or make a satisfactory arrangement to avoid future action. At that time the council’s normal Debt Recovery practices will apply starting with a demand letter issuing, at no cost, from Executive Collection for those assessments that have received two consecutive Reminder letters and have a minimum overdue balance of $1000.