1. Please advise if there is anyone who deals with Housing associations landlords within council tax team, please provide their name, direct email address and phone number too please. If not, please provide and alternative email address, where we can get complicated queries dealt with and advise who can take responsibility for responding to queries. For example who can review the portfolio and advise if there are long term empty property premiums applied to accounts, with a view to getting these brought back into use. Or advise how many accounts have outstanding balance with courts summons or out with debt collectors.
Our Council Tax department have advised we don’t have a anyone who deals with Housing associations landlords within council tax team. We don’t review portfolios or advise if empty property premiums are applied to accounts. All council tax accounts when processed or updated automatically produce a revised bill that is issued. It is down to any customers including housing associations to manage their own accounts.

2. Is it possible to arrange an in person or teams meeting to discuss accounts and get certainty that they are up to date. How can this be arranged and who with? Please provide contact details.
Our Council Tax department have advised we don’t have the time or resources to set up meetings as we deal with over 75,000 accounts. Any queries customers may have, including housing associations are all treated them same and should be emailed to ctax@wokingham.gov.uk. We accept spreadsheets from companies with multiple account queries and checks can then be carried out to ensure our records are up to date and any credits refunded.

3. Can you please advise if there is an online portal that is useable for a Housing association to log on and download bills and review accounts. Please advise how we can get access.
We have an online portal where customers can download bills and review accounts, this can be done at www.wokingham.gov.uk/council-tax select register/sign in to your account and follow the instructions on the page. Customers will need their council tax reference number/s for each account so this may not always be suitable for associations that hold multiple accounts. We do try and link housing association accounts under the same pin name so they only need to register once to see all their accounts, however some accounts may be missed from the link occasionally as this is down to manual processing.

4. Please advise if the council tax department can extract data showing closed accounts with balances and or open accounts with long term premiums added.
Yes the council tax department can extract data showing closed accounts with balances and or open accounts with long term premiums added providing we were given the liable party name e.g. name of housing association

5. Please advise, if the council has a registered charity or housing association listed as the account holder, is it policy to automatically apply class B exemption or does this need to be applied for each time a tenant changes. Please let me know if there is a different policy.
Yes we have a list of registered charity or housing associations who have already provided us with evidence of their status and is it policy to automatically apply class B exemption.

6. Does the council automatically issue refunds for credits on accounts or do they have to be requested?
The council tax team automatically issue refunds for credits on accounts where payments have been made by direct debit so we hold the bank details for the credit to be refunded to. All other credits have to be requested. Credit bills are issued to prompt this request.