Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, for each of the last three years, how many cases of individuals imprisoned for defaulting on their council tax were appealed to the High Court, and in how many of those cases the appeals were upheld.

Data showing how many people were imprisoned for non-payment of council tax in 2012, 2013 and 2014 are presented in the table below:

Notes:

These data are sourced from the Libra Management Information System (MIS). As such this data set is not subject to the same levels of quality assurance as national statistics

In extracting this data only offences of complaint for council tax committal application have been included where the court hearing date occurred within each year reported (i.e. between 1 January and 31 December).

It should also be noted that, although committals to prison are reported as occurring within a particular financial year, the non-payment of council tax itself may relate to a previous financial year or even a period covering more than one financial year.

Committal to prison for non-payment of council tax can be challenged through a judicial review in the High Court. The table below shows the number of judicial reviews relating to imprisonment for non-payment of council tax in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and the outcomes.

Notes:

These data were obtained from a manual check of judicial reviews carried out specifically to answer this question.