[Anita Gillies]

Is there any legislation relating to rate notices that are returned to council where ratepayers have failed to advise of a change of address.

Currently, we investigate all returned rate notices to try to find a current postal address.

Is Council obliged to do so? Any comments or opinions would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Susan Pardy]

Hi Anita,
Under Sec 710 Council is obliged (in relation to postal service of notices) to post the letter “to the last known place of residence or business or post office box of the person to be served”.
So as long as you sent to the notice to the last known address, whether returned or not, the notice is deemed to be served.
However, if the notice is then returned to sender, I am not aware of any legislation that states that you are obliged to investigate the correct address. However, I would propose that it would be in your interests to do so in order to ensure accounts are not accumulating overdue rates and charges when it is clear that Council was aware that the ratepayer did not in fact receive their notice (because it has been returned to you).
For mail returned to sender, we also do our best to proactively contact the ratepayers and advise of the circumstance and request a change of address be completed, and then accordingly post the returned notice to the new address.
I would be interested to hear if anyone else has any alternate viewpoints on this, or whether generally all Councils follow up RTS mail on the basis of customer service and trying to ensure accounts are paid in a timely manner?
Thanks,
Susan

[Suzi Flynn]

I agree with Susan on this. We do our best to locate ratepayers.

For those of you with high volumes of returns like the City, I find it quick and easy to scan the barcode on the returned notices and bulk upload a Returned Notice code to the assessments. That done, we can quickly identify things like 603’s issued, properties sold, accounts paid, or addresses updated between the data extract and the notice return date to reduce the amount of follow-up required.

[John Towers]

You need to know what notices have been returned & also check that changes have not been missed being recorded. You can choose to do this into your records system, rate system or store it in some-other way but you should always be prepared to be challenged on the basis that the notice/s were incorrectly addressed.

If you were taking legal action for recovery, you would also need to be prepared to say the notice was returned & these are the steps that were taken in order to find the customer. I could think of nothing worse than being asked & answering nothing.

This would be particularly the case when multiple notices are being returned from the same address over a period of time. Normal commercial rules apply here even if not specifically set out in the LGA.

I agree with Susan as to wanting to ensure payments are received & good customer service it is necessary to investigate.

Also Suzi’s comments re knowing what other things have happened regarding the assessment are crucial so that valuable resources are not wasted following up matters that will be resolved via other actions.

[David Simons]

Hi Guys

The High Court case of Sydney City Council v Garbett Pty Ltd (http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1995/2.html) seems to say that it doesn’t matter whether or not the person received the rates notice (look at para 12) as long as council has served it in accordance with the Act. There are also other cases to do with service by post that say once it has been sent it is served whether or not it was received.

At the end of the day it’s the ratepayers responsibility to keep the address current.

As far as good customer service, well that’s another thing. But take care if you want to start sending rates notices to an address that was not provided by the ratepayer. One day you may have to justify where the address came from and prove it’s a good address. Make sure your method of service is within section 710.

Lastly, we advised one of our councils to affix it to the land (which was vacant) in accordance with section 710(2)(e).

All the best

David

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