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 Yorks, Humber and Lincs. (15)

“I am emailing from Bradford where we are looking at our library fines arrears and collections.

 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 ...

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 Bradford when we moved to Talis work was done to identify outstanding fines and the issue of waiving fines was discussed but we believe that these were migrated across.

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 Bradford.

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 Bradford– yes, our 25 items allowance could lead to substantial fines – allowance to be reviewed as part of premium membership offer

Point about people living in poverty resonates with situation in Bradford – hence this -  " we have considered removing fines altogether but that a piece of work around costs of collection needs to be undertaken in order to understand the net effects. In addition this now also needs to be aligned with the Changing our Council Customer and Citizen work stream linked to aim of having a single point of contact."

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 Bradford – again stricter rules on waiving, we could amend our Guide procedure to include some of the above guidance and think about our Other and Staff Error categories these account for a large proportion of waives….

1.  commented on Bradford’s  Bailiff/Debt Recovery statement - …. is very interesting as we don't currently use the Council Debt recovery system and are just discussing starting this with Audit for anything over £50.  The other issue we have is that if we pass the debt across we will get a credit in our budget for that amount immediately and then if it is not recovered and written off we will have it taken from our budget as a write-off (deficit).  This could be two years later.  I am assuming that if there is a constant cycle of debts going through that it will generally balance out, but potentially I could have a deficit in one year and a surplus in another.  Does this happen in Bradford (or elsewhere)?

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.