Preston City Council - Council Tax Search

Council Tax (Unoccupied Properties – Broadcast)

The idea behind the project was to voice broadcast to all unoccupied properties, and record how many of these answered the phone. It was agreed with Preston City Council that they would run the pilot exercise.

We asked Preston to supply a copy of the unoccupied properties list from the council tax database. The file originally came with about 500 addresses on.

INTEC then carried out a data match against our national contact database, which showed some 300+ properties with registered phone numbers.

This list was then sent to Preston and after they had removed certain addresses through internal investigations etc, we were left with 307 addresses.

We identified that the following responses would be classed as a 'positive hit'

• "Answered by Human"
• "Answered by Answerphone"
• "Answered"
• "Busy"

Broadcast ONE

This was carried out on a Friday evening between 18:00 and 20:00. It identified 192 properties with a 'positive hit'

As there could be any number of reasons why someone was in the property for a one off call we made a second broadcast the following week.

Broadcast TWO

This was carried out on a Wednesday evening between 18:00 and 20:00. It identified 194 properties with a 'positive hit'

The two sets of data were then analysed and matched against the full addresses given. It showed that 181 properties had a positive hit on both broadcasts, with a large amount of the remaining numbers having 1 positive hit for at least one of the calls.

A detailed report was produced and sent to the revenues team showing which addresses had a positive hit on one or both occasions. The following investigations found 22 properties that were occupied or where work was in
progress to allow the owners to move in.

With an average council tax bill being around £1,300, this project helped identify £28,600 worth of revenue much quicker than random property inspections.