Local residents struggling to pay their rates will be offered a helping hand after City of Mandurah councillors voted in favour of recommendations to adopt a Rates Hardship Assistance program.
The City of Mandurah already uses an informal approach to work with ratepayers who are experiencing financial difficulty on a case-by-case basis.
Currently there are nearly 950 people on special payment arrangements, which span more than one financial year.
There is still a group of ratepayers the City is working with through the process of trying to achieve a viable payment plan and the number of people who need special arrangements continues to grow.
In late 2018, the Ombudsman Western Australia produced a good practice guide for local governments and recommended the development of a Hardship Assistance policy, which can be used in the community for the collection of overdue rates from people in vulnerable situations.
While the City already has many of the recommended actions in place, a formal policy is expected to provide a more consistent approach, easily understood by both ratepayers and community organisations.
The matter was discussed at the June 11 meeting, however, elected members will have to wait until their next meeting to cast an official vote.
Councillors showed unanimous support for the recommendation, particularly East Ward councillor Lynn Rodgers, who advocates for local families dealing with the soaring cost-of-living.
Ms Rodgers said she "fully agreed" with adopting an official Rates Hardship Assistance program.
"Mandurah has one of the highest rates of mortgage stress ... financial hardship is happening," she said.
"We should do what we can to relieve the burden on our residents."
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Mayor Rhys Williams said it was a credit to the City that staff already dealt with ratepayers experiencing financial difficulty in a respectful, empathetic way.
"We didn't need a policy to tell us that people experiencing financial hardship needed to be treated with respect," he said.
As of June 30, 2018, there was almost $3 million in outstanding rates, mostly represented by ratepayers struggling to settle their debts.
Despite actively trying to avoid court action by negotiating payment arrangements, 230 court summonses are issued on average each year for outstanding debts in Mandurah.
As part of the official policy, the council has also sought approval to suspend interest charges.
Currently, the City charges 7 per cent interest on outstanding debts, however, the suspension of interest on an individual debt for short-to-medium term periods is expected to be inexpensive to the City and very helpful to the ratepayer.
As well as voting in favour of the recommendation to adopt the Financial Hardship Assistance program, council also voted to authorise the discretionary suspension of interest charges as a method of helping those in need.
The matter will go back before council at their June 25 meeting.
The City are expected to decide rates for the 2019-20 year at the upcoming budget next month.
