Welcome To Wirral

The Metropolitan Borough of Wirral understands the problems associated with debt and have set up a policy to assist customers in paying off some of the debts owed to the Council.

People get into debt for many reasons, the main thing to remember is that by ignoring debt, it will only get worse. The sooner you do something about it, the better you will feel, and the more control you will have.

The policy has been developed to address the problems that some of our customers encounter. You may have many debts owing to the Council, but are unable to pay these off in the time expected. It is also designed to keep up payment of the current bills to stop you getting into more debt. Our aim is to break your cycle of Debt.

If you owe money for more than one of the following, an arrangement can be made under the Fair Debt Scheme. This means you can make one single payment towards the total amount owed. The debts included in the scheme are:

• Council Tax
• Housing Benefit Overpayments
• Business Rates
• Sundry Debtors Invoice

How do I apply?

You can either complete an income/expenditure form (See Income and Expenditure form in the links section), contact my Call Centre on 0151 606 2002 or call into any of the One Stop Shops around the Borough. (See Council Offices in the related links section).

You will be expected to keep up to date with your current year’s Council Tax/Business Rate liability, and this will be a condition of the arrangement made with you.

Once I have received your income/expenditure form, I will write to ask you to pay a weekly or monthly amount to clear your arrears, in addition to the current year’s liability.

If payments are being made as asked for and the current year’s bills are kept up to date, no recovery action will be taken.

In some circumstances, a debt cannot be included for Fair Debt. This is at the discretion of the Director of Finance.