Bradford
FOI request from Telegraph&Argus regarding fines – supplementary question
asked by Culture & Tourism Assistant Director
“Also any
comparative data on other library service fines arrears and collections would be
useful, together with any commentary on
enforcement.”
Question posted on LIS-PUB-LIBs discussion forum
(1233 recipients) and asked of SCL colleagues from
“I am
emailing from
We charge 15p per day per book from the day after the book is due back - up to a maximum of £10.00 per book - at present we allow customers to borrow 25 books.
When £10.00 accumulates against a customer their ticket is blocked and they cannot borrow books or use the internet.
When the fine reaches £25.00 an invoice is generated from the Council accounts payable department. Fines under £25.00 are not pursued beyond the invoice sent but the fines remain on the customers ticket and they cannot borrow more or use the internet.
If the debt is £25.00 or more the Council debt recovery department pursues the debt.
An analysis of payment of fines over the last three years shows that we actually receive back about half the amount of fine income that is generated. Around 11% of fine income amounts generated are waived .
We allow the following as reasons for staff to waive fines on our library management system - with percentages of how much income lost is related to staff use of the reason, e.g. 3% of total fine income waived is staff use of Claimed never had ...
Amnesty |
|
1 |
| ||
Bereavement |
|
1 |
| ||
Charged for replacement |
0.5 |
| |||
Claimed never had |
3 |
| |||
Claimed renewed |
|
9 |
| ||
Claimed returned |
|
5 |
| ||
Family emergency |
4 |
| |||
Found on Shelves |
7 |
| |||
Free Voucher |
|
0.5 |
| ||
Illness |
|
11 |
| ||
Mobile Library off road |
4 |
| |||
Other |
|
25 |
| ||
Staff Error |
|
23 |
| ||
System in Fallback |
4 |
| |||
Unspecified |
|
2 |
| ||
|
|
|
| ||
Information from our
Bailiff/Debt Recovery Officer - once invoice created, we send a
minimum of 3 reminders (demands). We would also try to contact
by phone if we have number. Manually raised letters are produced as
well as visits by Enforcement officers if debts
are still outstanding. We do not have a time period for writing
invoices off. We will pursue any all debts until all areas of recovery
have been exhausted. |
|
| |||
|
|
|
| ||
I would
appreciate any comments or information about
-
methods of charging and collecting fines that are either similar or different
from the above
-
successes relating to the charging/collecting (or non charging/collecting) of
fines, or frustrations that seem to be echoed from our
experiences
- any
comments about fines, arrears, collections and
enforcement.
Following responses received
1 . I'm very interested in this as
I am just discussing with Internal Audit how we can deal with waived charges and
also how we deal with collecting fines and charges using the Council's debt
recovery system. It has come about as we are just transferring to Talis
and I don't want to migrate inactive accounts, but there are charges on the
accounts which would need to be 'waived'.
I would be interested to know how
you dealt with your migration to Talis and any advice future reporting of
waives/write offs (as a long term user of Talis).
In
2.
We charge currently 7p per day overdue, up to a maximum of £3.50. We allow 14 items on loan, so that's a
maximum fine of £49.
The
first thing that strikes me is a customer could theoretically rack up fines
owing of £250 with
In
our area we try to ensure our policies don't have a disproportionate effect on
people living in poverty, and also people living chaotic, disorganised lives
(often the same people) - for these reasons we have deliberately kept our fines
relatively low. We are currently
reviewing our charges, and we will have to increase fines to 10p per day, but we
plan on keeping the £3.50 maximum, if our politicians and business support
people let us - this will minimise the impact on people's lives. Like you, we do not allow further loans
of items while fines owing are in excess of £10.
However,
we do allow use of the internet, as there is no further risk to council
property, and helps keep our citizens informed, which promotes digital
inclusion.
We
write an official Council bill when value of stock and fines owing exceeds
£50. If this isn't paid, and the
value, cumulated with other debts to the Council, exceeds £100, the customer is
pursued through the County Court, and this can lead ultimately to a warrant
being executed by bailiffs if the amount owing, including court costs, is not
paid. The procedure costs us
quite a lot of money, and probably does not justify itself financially. We as library managers would be happy to
raise the thresholds, but our business support people, auditors and councillors
are all keen that the current policies are followed.
Fines
can be waived to a limited degree by staff in the front line, up to a maximum of
£5. Anything greater has to be
authorised by a manager or supervisor, and there has to be a good cause such as
found on shelf, extenuating social circumstances etc.
Comments on the above from
Point about people living in poverty resonates with
situation in
Stricter rules on waiving with manager/supervisor
approval required for £5 and under – our limit is £10 should we consider
lowering to £5?
3. - we send a letter out to everyone with
outstanding charges on their account over £8 every quarter ( they might not have
any items so would not otherwise receive any communication e.g. unpaid fines or
reservation charges generated remotely)
This does get us back some charges but is also decent
customer service we think – reminds them they have a debt so its not such
a shock when they try and use us again if they are irregular library users.
Another thing we do – there’s a monthly report to
staff showing amounts waived by each branch – encouraging them to do what they
can to keep figure falling and remain on a par with other libraries. This
has had a big effect on the amounts waived at the smaller branches particularly
Waive Procedure
- taken from a pdf
This procedure is written to help staff understand when it is correct to give a waive on a borrowers account. Any waives that take place is money that will not be put back into the library service and it is important to know when to waive correctly. The Waive procedure is written as part of the Income and Charging Policy.
When do we waive charges?
Charges on people’s accounts can be waived when any of the following occur:
Borrower has deceased
*System has been down so you are unable to renew books in time so a charge was applied to customer accounts (System Not Working)
*An error by the system
*Charges are over 5 years old, for Customers up to the age of 18 this is over 1 year old
House Bound and Elderly peoples homes if it is required to do so to maintain the service delivery to those groups
*Lost Item Returned
Replacement Loan for a faulty Item
If someone has been Hospitalised or a Library Manager has authorised a waive then this should be put under See Remarks (Fines & Hires) and a note made on the customers record stating the reason, amount, date & your name.
* If this option is chosen then a reference must be made in the Customer remarks field on the Library Management System (Currently Galaxy) so that an audit trail is available.
When do we not waive charges?
Charges are not to be waived under these circumstances:
Customer thought they were due back on a different date
Sickness (We now offer various options for renewing)
Charges are under 5 years old, for Customers up to the age of 18 this is under 1 year old
If lost item is returned fines are still applied if they are on the customers account
For items issued or returned late by Library staff
For reservations not being fulfilled, follow the reservation procedure
It is important that everyone works to these procedures, the library management team will have access to a report about the amount of waives taken place and a monthly report will be given to Library Teams in the future for reviewing their local procedures when dealing with waive charges.
Comment on above from
1. commented on
We are also
discussing writing off fines after 6 years and these would have to be reported
in advance to Exec Director of Finance, but again early stages of
discussion. I'm also interested in what happens
elsewhere.
4.
-
we instituted a process of working with the Council’s debt recovery team about a
year ago – for outstanding payments over £50.00.
The credit (fees
and value of items outstanding) is set against to library budgets by Finance but
we place it in a ‘holding account’. As materials are returned and/ or fees
paid the value is drawn down into library budget codes. That way if the recovery
is unsuccessful we have the funds to return. At year end the monies are rolled
forward.