COUNCIL bosses will look at the wording of letters sent out to people falling behind on their council tax bills.

Hyndburn Council communities and wellbeing overview and scrutiny committee members passed recommendations asking senior officers to look at ways of making the letters as clear as possible to those receiving them.

As well as looking at ways of wording the letters differently, changing the font and type size will be considered because councillors said they can be difficult to read, especially for people with dyslexia or poor eyesight.

Cllr Kate Walsh said: "It may seem like a minor point but the size of the writing in the letters is very small and I think it needs to be in a larger font size.

"We have a lot of people who deal with dyslexia and making the writing just a bit bigger would be very helpful for them."

But sending letters out in languages other than English would be expensive and require a change in the council's corporate policy, customer contact manager, Rachael Walker said.

She added: "Language is not normally a problem. People who struggle with English usually have someone who can help them.

"We have a number of staff with multi-language abilities but it was a corporate decision a number of years ago to only use English."

Ms Walker said in cases where family members couldn't help with translation, people in churches, mosques and community centres were sometimes able to help.

Currently in Hyndburn, an unpaid bill on the most direct path down the recovery route will not be passed to bailiffs until approximately 71 days, or ten weeks, from the instalment being due.

By this point, the resident has been sent at least five letters and may have also received emails, text messages or direct calls from our officers.

Ms Walker added: "One of the first things we do is to make sure all relevant discounts are in place because sometimes people don't realise wht they are entitled to.

"We also look at payment history and what stage of the recovery cycle people are at.

"Maybe we could take a more direct route in terms of offering debt advice."

Cabinet member for resources, Cllr Joyce Plummer, said: "Our customer contact centre officers speak to more than 33,000 customers per year and face to face appointments are available for vulnerable people.

"The vast majority of collection and recovery is done internally.

"We only send cases to enforcement agencies if the taxpayer has not paid any instalments and not contacted the council.

"In the last year, our direct debit rate has increased from 60 per cent to 65 per cent."