Ok my partner owes £540 council tax for the current year (i recently went bankrupt), so name will be removed.

Had letter stating they would like £300 odd on 25th Feb and the remaining £200 odd on 1st March.

Was told a few weeks ago, that if bill is not settled in the beginning part of March they will submit a court summons.

Ok firstly my partner and with my aid are hoping to have the bill cleared by mid march.

Does anyone have any ideas of a rough time frame to clear the debt? When in March are councils likely to send a court summons?

What is a court summons?

What happens once the summons has taken place? Is the debt immediately sent to a baliff?

If so what are the options then? Are they likely to accept the amount in 3 lumps over a period of time without them visiting our home?

Alot of questions but just want an idea of the process the council will now use.

As i said hoping to have paid the debt before the summons is carried out.

Thanks

it will be for a liability order giving them the option of various methods of collecting the bal inc bailiffs

phone up the council a nd make a payment plan or go into the office by person.

most councils are very accomodating they do not want to do this but you must contact them

if you make and keep to the plan it will notgo to court

dx

At the moment they cannot legally force you to pay council tax, so they get a judge to stamp the fact that you are liable and then they can legally collect.

If you should get a lsummons for a iability order, it will have charges added on, but unless you can prove you are not liable to council tax then there is no point in attending the court as the judge cannot take into consideration your ability to pay, only your liability.

Liability orders are not recorded with any credit reference agency and they won't affect you credit status at all.

Bailiffs cannot be sent in without giving you 14 days notice.

Do as dx says and phone them or write to them with an offer of payments to clear it. They do not have to accept your offer if they have warned you about the arrears, but they will be more inclined to take payments after they have a liability order.

These only last for the current year, so if you were to miss payments next year, they could/would get another liability order, it makes them money to do this, a lot more than it cost them.

If you get a summons and pay it all off, the liability order will be withdrawn, but the fee won't.

If you should get a liability order agains you then come back for some more advice.

Thanks.

We have called them before and said we were in trouble and they arranged a direct debit for amounts that we couldnt afford to pay, so in the end the direct debits were cancelled. They didn't seem to want to make an arrangement for us to reduce the balance.

I think we will be paying it in 2 lumps during the first 2 weeks of March. I guess that wont cause too much of an issue? Am i right in saying the debt is not in theory owed until April 1st?

Thanks again

No, that's not correct. The amount is owed in one payment as from the date of the bill, but they will give you 10 months to pay. When you have a problem, they may extend it for 12 months but only as long as the agreed payments are kept up.

When they have a liability order they may allow the remainder to be spread over a few extra months alongside the normal payment. But they aren't really interested in your ability to pay, all they want is the money.

Almost 10,000 files for bankrupt have been brought against the public by councils, (over £750 owed), which shows they haven't the slightest interest in you, your family or if you have to live in the gutter. Of course, this is all on the orders of Gordon Brown who has robbed this country blind in his chancellorship and now as prime minister.