Councils provide tax status online

PDF to give details of balance and outstanding payments

Castle Morpeth Borough Council and Alnwick District Council are using a system that allows citizens to view council tax payment information online.

The system, called Gandlake Citizen’s Account, provides residents in both north east of England authorities with a PDF-formatted electronic statement.

Philip Britton, Castle Morpeth’s egovernment programme manager, says that the balance is included on the virtual sheets, as well as information on breakdowns of charges, multi-year payment histories and instalment plans.

‘Citizens can download the statement, print it out or store it on their computer, and it looks exactly the same as the normal paper print-out they would get as part of their council tax sheets,’ he said.

Apart from the improvement in service to citizens, the two councils have also gained a range of savings from the new system, including cutting postage costs and reducing the number of enquiries received by the council.

Britton says these savings are helping Castle Morpeth and Alnwick councils to meet government efficiency targets set by the Treasury.

‘Data is downloaded automatically from existing council tax systems, then uploaded to the Gandlake servers. So apart from one person who checks that the figures coming out are correct, it requires very little effort on our part,’ he said.