A direct debit question

[Chefpig]

I have my council tax due out on 1st of each month. I'd like to change it to the middle of the month to be more aligned with the rest of my income and I'm going to struggle to pay it this month although will scrape by.

The Council tax department aren't open now until 2nd January. Can I cancel my dd due to come out on 1st and contact them when they open on 2nd to arrange a dd for a new date or may this affect my credit rating/anything else? I'm usually very good at paying bills.

If you do that they will chase you for unpaid council tax, the system will do it automatically.
Pay it on the 1st as usual and then contact them to change it for next month.

I think if you do this it will go against you as a late payment - better to leave the payment on the 1st of Jan and then rearrange the direct debit for February.

I suspect council tax will be one of those things they process on a set day so everyone's comes out on that date rather than you getting to chose the payment date.

Change in direct debit is usually recommended to do weeks in advance so I would pay this one as is and then moved the next month. That's what I am planning

Thank you everyone. I will leave it to come out on 1st as usual.

Council tax is payable over 10 months so no repayments for February and March so you will have time to alter the date for 2026/27

Council Tax is legislated to be the 1st of the month, however, I do know from reading on here that some people pay on a later date. The legislation is also for 10 monthly payments, no payments in February and March as that means more time to collect monies owed. The variation to this is moving house and how the bill is recalculated.

If I changed someone to a weekly payment plan I had to enclose a legal letter stating that this was still subject to the usual legislation covering the monthly payment plan because somehow central government didn't think to cover 40 weekly payments.

Due to the Cost of Living crisis lots of people have now switched to 12 monthly payments.

The main thing to bear in mind is this is a government tax collected locally. They can and do take it directly from your income on a fixed amount, no negotiation which does decimate the salary, easy to google attachment of earnings. Legislation also sets out reminder notices and how many you can have, this is not like a utility bill. Do not fall behind. Pay everything you can if you can't pay the whole amount and contact them. They are lovely people who want to help you because their goal is to collect the money within the tax year. I have bent over backward to help people.

Let January go through then ask about changing the date to later in the month.

Edited to say this sounds far more scary than I intended. I just wanted everyone to be aware it should be a priority bill, there is not a lot of wiggle room on this unlike other bills so as workers our hands are tied. It has been a while since I worked in council tax but do look up your local council for things like attachment of earnings. That is only after reminders, final notice, magistrates court for a liability order and then that gives them the power to do the attachment. You want to avoid that at all costs. You can make payment arrangements but think about it like this, if you are struggling to afford council tax now, it always rises every year so you want to try to clear the bill in the same tax year.