Hello,

I hope someone can help me with some advice? I was struggling with Council Tax payments over a period of 4 years and I toed and froed with the council and bailiffs over this period to get to an affordable payment plan, luckily the council took the debt back from marston who were a nightmare as I was pregnant at the time of them being involved so my case was seen as a vulnerable one.

To cut a long story short I have gone from nearly owing them £4500 to now only owing them £600 which I am pleased about however, after looking through the bills over this period there have been charges of over £650 applied to my account over the years so actually I just owe costs and not council tax. This is quite a lot of money, does anyone know whether I can dispute paying the court costs back, I never went to court at all and always dealt with the council directly when agreeing a payment plan.

No worries if it's not possible it's worth asking. Thank you!

Are you meaning the costs added when the Council applied for liability orders ?

How many accounts are showing as still outstanding ?

Hi ctax

Were you aware of these court costs accumulating?

My guess is that whatever payment plan you had arranged with your council has resulted in your oldest debt being paid off as a priority. Consequently this may have left you open to incurring court costs for each of the subsequent year's council tax accounts.

If I have assumed correctly, then this would appear negligent or at least irresponsible of your council to allow this situation to happen. However, I believe some councils have systems which are set so payments are automatically allocated to the oldest debt if more than one account is outstanding.

I believe the way these systems operate are not as straight forward as this, but if relevant to your case, I will dig out the information.

This was the information I was referring to in my previous post.

This Council Tax Investigation may have something relevant to your case.

QUOTE:

Very interesting.

Martin3030 - Yes they are charges relating to liability orders, by virue of the fact that I only have £600 outstanding it would only apply to last years CT, the rest is all paid off and I finish paying them off in August this year so back to zero. I took a look at a history of my CT statements on-line and on each year there is a fee of £96 + £20 odd added to the bill for the Court and Liability Order costs. It doesn't show online where the outstanding debt applies.

Outlawla - I could get in touch with them to find out how they have distibuted my payments, my account for last year finishing this march had costs of £125 applied but in the same period i paid them £1800 which is double my council tax for the year, the year before another charge of £97.00 when a payments of £1700 were paid -1200 as a lump sum and again the year before 97 costs but with only payments of £600, so it does look like they have paid the older debts first, which has led to me incurring costs on the new bills.

What do you advise I should do?

I paid them a lump sum of £1800 last year in March and then I have been paying a monthly amount to get the debt down, so actually thinking about what your saying I should not have had a charge applied to my account last year?

Cheers for your help so far!

I have had a couple of L/Os myself.

There was one occasion where they sent me the usual letter of intention to apply.

I sorted it out but noticed they had still added on the 100 quid costs for this.

It prompted me to do a full SAR.

Wading through the paperwork when it came was no easy feat since they bundle everything up by date which means having to reconcile everything by year etc and follow it through.

It was worth doing since they ended up crediting £100 back as quick as a flash.

It has been reported extensively on these forums that Councils file L/Os in bulk and that the cost of a Mag rubber stamping them is a couple of quid.

When I did a FOI to my Council asking for a breakdown of their costs to process a L/O amazingly they had it calculated down to the penny.

In consideration of what outlawla has said,I will be doing another to establish both their allocation system,but more importantly,if they are aware of the Peter v Anderson (1814) case.

Should be interesting,but moreso will alert others looking at CT FOI requests to be made aware of this case.

I would encourage everyone to do a FOI to their local Councils to see how they are so quick to chase overdue CT arrears,and yet are not totally beyond reproach themselves.

I did one to obtain figures for the parking enforcement they set up,and was staggered to learn that they had lost £186k on it !!

I wrote to the local rag,but for some strange reason the story did not appear.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/information_on_parking_in_sthele#comment-14791

Others here;

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/information_in_respect_of_collec#comment-24803

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ndr_business_rates#incoming-258675

I was interested to see the figures where bailiff activity had been used in cases where the account holder was unemployed or otherwise in a vulnerable class.

Also what proportion of those instructions were subsequently returned to the Council.

The figures are quite alarming and show a high proportion.

Since those on DWP benefits are amost certainly in receipt of HB and on Council systems,there is absolutely no excuse for bailiff instruction.

Martin3030 - Yes they are charges relating to liability orders, by virue of the fact that I only have £600 outstanding it would only apply to last years CT, the rest is all paid off and I finish paying them off in August this year so back to zero. I took a look at a history of my CT statements on-line and on each year there is a fee of £96 + £20 odd added to the bill for the Court and Liability Order costs. It doesn't show online where the outstanding debt applies.

 

Outlawla - I could get in touch with them to find out how they have distibuted my payments, my account for last year finishing this march had costs of £125 applied but in the same period i paid them £1800 which is double my council tax for the year, the year before another charge of £97.00 when a payments of £1700 were paid -1200 as a lump sum and again the year before 97 costs but with only payments of £600, so it does look like they have paid the older debts first, which has led to me incurring costs on the new bills.

 

What do you advise I should do?

 

I paid them a lump sum of £1800 last year in March and then I have been paying a monthly amount to get the debt down, so actually thinking about what your saying I should not have had a charge applied to my account last year?

 

Shall

For a tenner I would deff consider doing a full DSAR asking for everything.

Statements

Screenshots of your account.

Copies of all communications

etc etc.

I agree! You want to be getting as much info about your accounts as you can get hold of.

Can't think of the best way forward with regards tackling them on this, until maybe they come up with an explanation as to why they allowed you (or their machine allowed you) to incur all these costs each year. Be prepared for obstruction and excuses though and post back details.

Be prepared for obstruction and excuses

Thats a foregone conclusion.............

Thanks guys, will kick it off with a letter to them today... have printed off the audit that you referred to and will see what happens... Bit of a learning curve as I don't really undertand the whole LO thing but I'll pick it up, can I still refer back to you if I need to?

I'd appreciate if you do post details of any response you get from the council.

Particularly interesting would be any reference they might make to overturning (or not) the liability orders, if it was found they were obtained because of the council's negligence.

If they state it is not possible to quash a council tax liability order, it might be worth reminding them that a council can apply to the Magistrates’ court under R5(2) of the Council Tax Regulations SI 2004/927 to have all trace of the order deleted from the record.

Hi Outlawla

Don't know whether you have read this http://z2k.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/council-tax-liability-order-hearing_justice-of-the-peace-310503_AM.pdf

Hi Outlawla

 

Don't know whether you have read this http://z2k.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/council-tax-liability-order-hearing_justice-of-the-peace-310503_AM.pdf

Thanks for posting that ploddertom. I've seen this before, but couldn't remember where.

Just to update you, I still haven't heard anything back from the council.Their auto response said 14 days to respond to queries, so will be chasing them up today!

hi i had 2 debts with rossendales i paid 1 in full(400) and arranged payments for the other,because i missed a payment(i was in hospital) they are now demanding payment in full or going to take my goods.like to see them try. i contacted the council and they told me that they have only recieved 10 off rossendales although i paid the first in full.so now i still owe council how can this be