Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what guidance his Department has issued on whether the landlord or tenant is responsible for the payment of council tax when a tenant leaves the property but fails to inform the landlord.

The hierarchy of liability for council tax is set out in Section 6 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992. A resident tenant of a dwelling is higher in the hierarchy of liability than a non-resident owner. A tenant who has permanently vacated a property is not liable for council tax under local government finance legislation. Decisions on liability are a matter for billing authorities, and will depend on the particular circumstances of each case, such as whether the property is that person's sole or main residence, or whether there are other remaining residents.

My Department has not issued specific guidance on this issue, however, our predecessor, the Department of the Environment, has previously done so. I have placed a copy of “Council tax practice note 2” in the Library of the House. It is a reflection of the prevailing legislation at that point in time; with that caveat, it is still guiding otherwise. Paragraph 7 deals with the determination of council tax on a daily basis and states that for liability purposes ‘The state of affairs at the end of any day is assumed to have lasted all that day.'