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Court fines - how are repayment levels arrived at?
We may be helping a cl negotiate a reduction in his repayment of a UC advance. The gent also has a fine from the court that is being deducted and the combination of the two is leaving him very short of money.
I haven’t been to a Mags Court for some years but I seem to remember that the accused were routinely given a statement of means to fill in to make sure the repayment rate for fines was reasonably affordable.
Does anyone know how this works if the hearing takes place without the accused ( either due to COVID or something else)?
Does this answer your question Pete?
I don’t know what they are doing in the mags about setting fine levels at the moment, but it might be helpful to set out how this fits within UC deduction rules as set out in the Claims and Payments Regs and the Fines (IS) Regs.
I think the first point is that the total deductions at the moment shouldn’t exceed 30% of the Standard Allowance (the Regs allow 40%, but the compassionate DWP is using 30% for now).
The standard/minimum/starting point for deductions for fines is 5% of the Standard Allowance (if there’s anything left to take after housing, energy and Council Tax arrears). But I think it’s up to the DWP to decide whether to deduct more - I don’t think it’s up to HMCTS (a bit like rent arrears deductions - not up to the landlord). Anything over the 5% will drop down to the bottom of the priority list for deductions.
Often the best thing you can do is just ask UC to reduce the deductions because they’re causing hardship. They may listen; especially if you can give them a financial statement, and that might persuade them to keep to the minimum deductions. But it can be a bit hit and miss.