Hello all,

having a bit of a problem with Ross and Roberts so I've come on here to get a bit of advice or more info really.

We owe £440 in council tax arrears from a previous property, but have sinced moved to Ireland. We forgot about paying this in the ups and downs of moving country and this was passed to R&R who contacted us on the 25th of January this year. I phoned them back a few days later and made a payment of £50 as it was all we could afford at the time, and had thought I'd set it up with them for the to automatically draw the same amount every month. They seemed unhappy with this as they wanted more, but as they stated on the phone at the time, they were unble to send bailiffs around (as they have none in Ireland), so I sort of forced their hand on it.

2 Months went by and we found out it was not something they were automatically taking, so I contacted them by phone again and agreed to pay them a further £50 at the end of the month. At the end of the month my partner gave birth to twins and to be honest we completely forgot to pay them. Fast forward to Friday just gone and we got a letter dated the 18th of May (with a post mark of the 30th of May on the envelope) and we got a letter saying contact them in 5 days to pay the full amount. I didn't see the mail until Saturday (due to work) and they were closed when I tried to ring over the weekend. Yesterday we got another letter, dated the 23rd post marked with a revenue agency stamp marked 3rd of June) saying that despie numerous visits from their bailiffs (there have been none, so guessing this is a form letter) we have failed to clear the outstanding amount and that unless we pay them in 7 days they are returning the liability order to the client for the following action:

• Application for your committal prison [sic]
  
• bankruptcy
  
• Charge on your property
  

Now we're a bit nervous, as we don't have the money for the full amount. My partner does not work over hre (due to looking after the kids) so is ringing them today to offer to pay about £100 which we can just about afford, and then to payoff a substantial amount at the end of the month.

Just worried about if this really could be something where I could end up having to g back to the UK to go to prison, or if I can still try and sort this out with them. Does anyone have any experience with this, or any advice?

Thanks.

Oh I forgot to mention that when the letter first came through my partner attempted to contact them by email but never received a reply. She phoned them later because as we are in another country we cannot ring their 0845 number to make a payment, we were told to "just ring it" despite the fact that we could not do so.

One of my major issues here is with the dating vs the post marking of these letters. As the one alledged to be sent on the 25th appears to have been sent well over a week afterwards I'm concerned that we never had a chance to try and contact them before it was sent back to the council (if it has been yet?). Anyway I'm pretty worried at the moment, and have to go to work now, so hopefully this won't affect my work

My partner rang them and they were happy to put the payment system back in place. I'm not sure if it was just heavy handed threats we received, or if living in another country made things a lot simpler to resolve.