Haringey Council - Provisional Council Tax Problem

[Mr Bubbles]

Ok, I will try to make this as clear as possible.

I moved into a house on June 05 in Haringey (London), and stayed there for exactly one year, leaving in June 06.

Upon starting my council tax payments I was not notified of the nature of so called 'provisional banding', was not given any documentation, or even smallprint explaining the nature of it.

I paid every month the amount that was on the original council tax bill, each month calling the call centre and asking specifically how much I needed to pay. Upon leaving I made a final call and asked to pay everything remaining, which I did. Everything was honest and above board.

At no point during those 12 months was the banding mentioned by Haringey council, and at no point during my final conversation with them regarding the final payment was the 'provisional banding' mentioned.

As far as was aware the payments had been made and I was able to get on with my life.

Or so I thought.....

In November 2007 Haringey Council decides to change the band of the property - over a year after i moved out of the house. And I suddenly, without warning recieve a summons of non payment of council tax!! None of the call centre operatives could understand the information made available to them on their computers, and so the court summons was put on ice.

I have since appealed to Haringey Council and recieved a warning stating that the original bill they issued over 2 years ago was provisional and that they can legally backdate payments up to 6 YEARS!! Upon inspection of my original bill it does seem to say PROVISIO on it (no N there). However, as stated before, I have heard any mention from anyone at Haringey about provisional taxing, and even if they did briefly mention it (which i am damn sure they did not) how can they charge me when I have not been in Haringey for way over a year? The letter they sent me also stated that they are not legelly obliged in any way to send out documentation stating the nature of provisional tax??

At every turn the information that has come from Haringey has been littered with grammatical and spelling errors, call centres have absolutely no idea what to make of the data available to them, need to know information is not being passed on to the consumer, and absolutely no contact has been made untill they send a summons to my door.

I was in the house for a year, nothing was mentioned, i paid up and left; over a year later I get a court summons demanding money that came into existance over twelve monts after the band was changed.

Not really fair in my book.

Does anyone else have any problems like this and is there any hope to beat these thieves?

Thanks for listening.

And sorry if I repeated myself anywhwere

[Rob S]

The first question that has to be asked is why did the council change the banding? These were set in 1991 and normally would only be changed if an appeal had been made by the owner of the property. The only thing that springs to mind is the property was new when you moved in. Was this the case?

It might be worth your while looking at this site for ideas on how to challenge the banding:_

Council Tax Reclaiming: Check & challenge your band to reclaim £1,000s...

Another good site for finding out the actual prices that property has sold for in the last 6 years is this one:-

Our Property gives free house prices from Land Registry data - OurProperty.co.uk

It gets prices from the Land Registry, so you will be able to compare the prices of property close to your old one and compare it with the banding that the property has now been given.

This is another site you might find useful:-

Council Tax Valuation List

[Mr Bubbles]

It turns out that the house was on a provisional band since the year 2000 and nobody noticed it, until 2007 when the banding was finaly decided.

Haringey council will not take responsibility claiming that they are only required to submit a banding request to the Valuation office; The Valuation office say they banded it in 2007 after a request from Haringey, and that there was a communication/admin error that kept the property on a provisional band for 7 years - which they do not eccept responsibility for.

My problem is that there is a huge admin communication problem between these two bodies that has resulted in over 11 parties at the property to be hit with an unexpected and unjustified bill - none of who have been informed sufficiently or in any way, to the nature of provisional banding.

This is not fair and they have given me a summons for next month that they refuse to remove while I arrange to get help from my local MP.

How incompetent can these people be?

Mr B