Council tax status for students with lodgers - data protection issue?

Jackie_Witney

Just wondering if anyone else had come across this situation and whether anyone else is concerned about the data protection issues that arise:

• Imagine you are a home-owner and pay all of the bills yourself from your own current account.
• If you lived alone you would receive 25% discount on council tax.
• If a lodger then moves in with you, council tax will go up to the full amount.
• Then you choose to study full-time, either as a break from work, or alongside work.
• At this point you are a full-time student and now disregarded for the purpose of calculating council tax, so it's back down to 75% at this point if you still have the lodger.
• As you are disregarded for council tax calculations, the local council consider your lodger to be the main householder, and start to send the council tax bills to them, even if payment is still coming from your bank account (and your lodger will probably be paying you an all-inclusive rent that includes a contribution towards council tax, if that's how you calculate it)

This apparently is the ONLY way that the council in my area can administer council tax.  However, I have the following problems with this (this is a situation that I was in, in 2018-19):

1. My lodger has some financial information regarding my council tax payments - this to me is a data protection issue;
2. I DON'T have access to my council tax bills unless my lodger chooses to share the mail with me, as the local council will only send this information by post and it is obviously addressed to my lodger.

Fortunately for me I was in a situation where this did not become a major problem, but I can imagine other homeowners who have lodgers would have a serious issue with their lodger being considered the only person to whom the council tax bill could be addressed, when the homeowner is the one actually paying the bills.  How do you find out if your council tax bill is being increased or decreased if your lodger withholds the bill and/or other correspondence from you?  How do you know how much your direct debit is when the new bill comes out in April if your lodger has chosen not to share the bill with you, or goes on holiday at the wrong time of year?  Should this be flagged up as an issue given the tighter regulations since GDPR came in?

kuratowski

Sounds like a bit of a niche situation, which they haven't properly accounted for in their systems.  Happily, you didn't lose out though.

If you care about it strongly enough, raise a complaint with the council on data protection grounds, and if you're not happy with their response, escalate to the your councillor and/or the Information Commissioner.

KatrinaWaves

Usually council tax banding for an area are available online, therefore you can find out the amount if said lodger was being difficult. I assume you know your band and can find the amount and work out 75% of it.

Council tax works on liable parties. If you’re not liable, then the lodger is, so they get the bill. The fact you are paying for it perhaps needs to be looked at and instead reduce your lodgers rent by that amount and get them to pay it, but that’s something you’ve chosen to do, not the council.  You’re a student, you’re not liable, so they can’t pursue you. 

I can’t see a data protection issue. You are paying on the lodgers council tax account, and they have every right to see the status of their account. If you didn’t pay THEYD be the one being chased, so they need access to that information. There is no data protection issue. What data are you worried about? 

Jackie_Witney

kuratowski said:

If you care about it strongly enough, raise a complaint with the council on data protection grounds, and if you're not happy with their response, escalate to the your councillor and/or the Information Commissioner.

good point - might well consider it!

unforeseen

 kuratowski said:

Sounds like a bit of a niche situation, which they haven't properly accounted for in their systems.  Happily, you didn't lose out though.

If you care about it strongly enough, raise a complaint with the council on data protection grounds, and if you're not happy with their response, escalate to the your councillor and/or the Information Commissioner.

But if it changes then the new problem is that the lodger then has a data protection complaint because the op will be able to see their financial information.

The solution may well be to reduce the lodgers rent to offset the council tax. It won't leave you with much though.

ETA
If the lodger is a Monday - Friday lodger then they won't be liable as it is not their main residence and the are paying CT elsewhere.
The list of responsibility lists resident but the definition for CT is

A resident is a person aged 18 years or over who occupies the dwelling as their only or main home.

Jackie_Witney

KatrinaWaves said:

Usually council tax banding for an area are available online, therefore you can find out the amount if said lodger was being difficult. I assume you know your band and can find the amount and work out 75% of it.

Council tax works on liable parties. If you’re not liable, then the lodger is, so they get the bill. The fact you are paying for it perhaps needs to be looked at and instead reduce your lodgers rent by that amount and get them to pay it, but that’s something you’ve chosen to do, not the council.  You’re a student, you’re not liable, so they can’t pursue you. 

I can’t see a data protection issue. You are paying on the lodgers council tax account, and they have every right to see the status of their account. If you didn’t pay THEYD be the one being chased, so they need access to that information. There is no data protection issue. What data are you worried about? 

Hi, yes, council tax banding info is freely available, and it is possible to see the total due in a given tax year.  However, as student status starts and finishes mid-tax-year, and my local council (and I suspect others are the same) are unable to deal with household changes without giving you a whole month off of paying council tax and then re-evaluating the amount you pay for the rest of the year, the exact amount due in a given month can vary significantly.  It's at these times it can be difficult to work out how much will be paid before the direct debit goes out.

Good point re: the lodger being liable, and this could be concerning for a lodger, because (as I understand it) most lodgers don't pay for the council tax separately as it's normally a constituent part of the rent they pay.  So yes, the lodger would be liable for 75% of the full bill if the homeowner failed to pay, rather than being jointly liable for the full bill if the homeowner isn't a student. So yes, they do have a right to see what they are liable for, and it's just as annoying/concerning for a lodger as it is for a homeowner.

The bit that concerns me is that the lodger can see from the bill exactly how much I pay each month, what date it is paid each month and how I pay (i.e. direct debit).  I am no expert on financial fraud, but I am a little concerned that this might be enough information (combined with the address on the bill and the knowledge of the homeowner's name) to use in some form of financial fraud.  Given how much financial fraud is going on, and how many times we are told to protect our personal and financial information, this just seemed a little too insecure to me.  But maybe that's just me, as I can be a tad overcautious!

davidmcn

Jackie_Witney said:

KatrinaWaves said:

Usually council tax banding for an area are available online, therefore you can find out the amount if said lodger was being difficult. I assume you know your band and can find the amount and work out 75% of it.

Council tax works on liable parties. If you’re not liable, then the lodger is, so they get the bill. The fact you are paying for it perhaps needs to be looked at and instead reduce your lodgers rent by that amount and get them to pay it, but that’s something you’ve chosen to do, not the council.  You’re a student, you’re not liable, so they can’t pursue you. 

I can’t see a data protection issue. You are paying on the lodgers council tax account, and they have every right to see the status of their account. If you didn’t pay THEYD be the one being chased, so they need access to that information. There is no data protection issue. What data are you worried about? 

The bit that concerns me is that the lodger can see from the bill exactly how much I pay each month, what date it is paid each month and how I pay (i.e. direct debit).  I am no expert on financial fraud, but I am a little concerned that this might be enough information (combined with the address on the bill and the knowledge of the homeowner's name) to use in some form of financial fraud.

I can't think how. And anyone who knows you live there can already have a good guess at all of that anyway.

silvercar

There will be literally thousands of people in your area paying their council tax on the same day of the month by direct debit, I don't see how that could lead to financial fraud; though I have been asked as a supplementary security question from my bank, to name one of my direct debits. Any lodger is obviously going to know their landlord's name and address, so that is a red herring.

Jackie_Witney

davidmcn said:

The bit that concerns me is that the lodger can see from the bill exactly how much I pay each month, what date it is paid each month and how I pay (i.e. direct debit).  I am no expert on financial fraud, but I am a little concerned that this might be enough information (combined with the address on the bill and the knowledge of the homeowner's name) to use in some form of financial fraud.

I can't think how. And anyone who knows you live there can already have a good guess at all of that anyway.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure if it is really a problem.  But anyone who knows where I live will only know my name and address.  A lodger can pick up my full name (by observing "official" mail arriving), my date of birth (by noticing when my birthday is and if I'm open about my age, can then deduce my date of birth) and who I bank with (again by observing mail, although probably only when it is opened, or by noticing my debit card or which bank I visit).  
These are innocuous enough if you are getting on well with your lodger (or think you are), but I vaguely remember there being a security question regarding direct debits when phoning up the bank to do something - whereby after confirming one's name and whichever other details they ask for, they then ask you to name a direct debit from your account and how much it is and/or when it was last paid.  I realise banks are tightening up their security at the moment (especially online) but I wonder if this would be enough info for someone to contact the bank pretending to be me and arrange for money to be transferred out of my bank account.  As I said, I can be a bit overcautious!
To be fair, I've only started worrying this much about stuff like this since someone (completely remote - no idea who they were) hacked my Ebay account and bought stuff using my PayPal account, which had a knock-on effect on my bank account.  In reality, I've been lucky enough not to be concerned about this type of situation with a lodger, but having seen the council tax bill going to my lodger it did make me realise there could be trust and/or communication issues between other full-time-student-homeowners and their lodgers.
I think Unforeseen's suggestion of getting the lodger to pay the council tax directly and reducing rent by an equivalent amount would probably be a good solution for anyone who doesn't have a sufficiently good relationship with their lodger (and students can't always be fussy!) - and although it wouldn't leave much rental income, the overall balance would be the same.  But I think that anyone who might find themselves in this situation (either as the homeowner or the lodger) should think carefully about how to deal with the council tax.

silvercar

To get round the direct debit problem, the answer is to pay by some other means. I do get the point you are making but it is very niche. The answer is to explain to the lodger that as a student the council tax obligation is his/hers alone and so you will reduce the rent appropriately. You may want to ask the lodger for proof of payment of the council tax, to avoid bailiffs turning up on your door step when the lodger has left.

davidmcn

Jackie_Witney said:

davidmcn said:

The bit that concerns me is that the lodger can see from the bill exactly how much I pay each month, what date it is paid each month and how I pay (i.e. direct debit).  I am no expert on financial fraud, but I am a little concerned that this might be enough information (combined with the address on the bill and the knowledge of the homeowner's name) to use in some form of financial fraud.

I can't think how. And anyone who knows you live there can already have a good guess at all of that anyway.

A lodger can pick up my full name (by observing "official" mail arriving), my date of birth (by noticing when my birthday is and if I'm open about my age, can then deduce my date of birth) and who I bank with (again by observing mail, although probably only when it is opened, or by noticing my debit card or which bank I visit). 

Is your full name on the Land Registry for the property? Was your birth registered in the UK? These things aren't rocket science to figure out. Lots of people will know who you bank with, and fraudsters can just work through the most likely options anyway (if it were me, I'd start with your mortgage lender).

Yes, some types of fraud are going to be easier for people who live with you to carry out, but you've taken on that risk by having a lodger - I don't think this particular issue really adds much to the mix.