1. Please provide the details for;
a) Person responsible for management of empty private residential property
No information held. We are not responsible for management of empty private residential properties. Letting agents and private owners would inform our department if properties are empty (or occupied) on a case by case basis but this is not a data we would record in a specific place to be able to report on.

b) Person responsible for billing of Council Tax on empty private residential property
This would just be a general council tax team processing task; so whoever came across the item of correspondence that indicated a property was empty would process it.

c) Any other appropriate officers within the council
Not applicable.

2. Does the Council use any private company to:
a) Trace owners of private residential empty property? If so, which Company/ies does the Council use?
If someone wasn’t paying on a empty property and we know who the owner was we do use Experian as a third party tracing agency to try and trace the owner so we can contact them for payment but we could also use general information from Electoral Register department and land registry if needed.

b) Recover Council Tax or other debts from Empty private residential property? If so, which Company/ies does the Council use?
If someone wasn’t paying on a empty property and we know who the owner was we do use Experian as a third party tracing agency to try and trace the owner so we can contact them for payment but we could also use general information from Electoral Register department and land registry if needed.

c) Check lists of presumed empty private residential property for any reason whatsoever? If so, which Company/ies does the Council use?
We do review ‘all’ empty premises listed on the council tax system whether private, housing association or otherwise each year and send out a letter to each property/owner to check they premises are still empty. This is carried out internally by our investigation team.