We didn't apply at the time, because we felt that in light of my income £1k per month, that we would not be eligable to actually get anything. Unfortunately that was all we had to live on and our rent takes out 3/4 of that amount.

Thank you for your advice. I'm a little vaugue over the timescales but I think his first period of employment was from 1968 for about four years, he then had a 12 month break and return to them and left in 1980, so his second round could have been over five years. Thanks for the link, I'll check with them.

Thanks for the info. We do want to make payment, and we have tried to come to an arrangement, which they accepted. What we don't like is the fact that although they've accepted this arrangement, they are still sending us the your account is overdue... we want our money letters and they are even sending them by recorded delivery. Both my husband and myself are not well and receiving these kinds of letters just seams like harassment, especially when we have an agreement in place. They've been helpful, and even let us downsize in order to try and solve the problem, it's just that they don't seam to get the fact that we aren't trying to avoid payment, just that we can't always make the payments on time.:o

It was actuall meter readings (although we were stupid enough not to check the initial readings provided to us by our landlord). I've asked them to come and test the meter, but they appear to have completely ignored this request and instead sent us out a pack to try and log the consumption and find out what's costing us. It's our first bill, so we don't know what the average was for the previous tenant. Can we ask the company to provide us with that info, or is it against the data protection act?

Hi, My husband worked for Howard Farrows in his early years (which became Farrows and was then taken over by their sister company Rendells) and paid superannuation, he did not keep pay slips. He did work for them approximately between 1967/8 and 1979/80 a years break in the middle, he can't remember exact dates. We've been trying to trace this pension of late, in order to hopefully find enough in the fund to either use it or to transfer it to another pension source. We have written to the Pension Tracing Service, who provided us with an address. We wrote to them and they said they had no trace of a pension for my husband. We wrote to the National Insurance on the basis that if he was working, there would have been National Insurance contributions and they should be able to trace who paid them and hopefully it would give us the current company name, but they have not come back to us with any sensible answer. His dad also worked for this company until he retired and his mum received a regular widows pension, until she died. Someone we know suggested finding the insurance company that Rendells currently uses for it's pension services, so we were thinking of writing to the Insurance company that paid his dads pension to see if they would have any records of my husbands contributions. Does anyone have any other ideas about tracing pensions and useful websites that speak plain english. We don't have any money to be able to pay someone else to do the work for us.

Hi, My husband was signed off from January 16th til March 28th due to surgery. He is self employed, he didn't qualify for Incapcity Benefit, could we still make a claim for any other benefit, or is it too late? We thought about claiming the above at the time as we were living on my salary and it didn't quite cover the basic household bills, which is why we are now behind. Does anyone know if we can still put the claim in to have some of the Council tax disallowed and back date any help towards paying our private rent? Are there any other claims we could be making and if so to whom should we apply? Advice is appreciated.

Hi, We've have an outstanding bill from 2003, for which we had an agreement to pay Bristol City Council, which we were maintaining. In December we moved into a new flat and therefore incurred CT for the remainder of the current year. In January my husband went off work after surgery so we were unable to make a few payments. I wrote to the Council to ask if we could renegoiate our payment plan to include the current tax year as well. The letter we had back stated "Due to the extended period of time for the proposed payment of the debts currently outstanding, this office will take recovery action concerning the debt now due for 2007/2008 if it is not paid in full. However, this office is willing to accept your proposal for payment at the rate of £40 from April 2008, with the payment of £29 in March 2008." We assumed from this that our proposal covered both current and old debts and sent our March payment accordingly. It didn't reach them and we were concerned because we had the standard you owe us ..... letter that said the next step was to take us to court. So we emailed them and received a reply several days later. The reply says that the summons is for the current year and that the arrangement only applied to our old address. It also states that they have now put the old outstanding balance in the hands of a Baliff (Rossendales - I've not heard good things about them from this forum). We beleive that their previous letter covered both outstanding balances. The summons court date is 28th April (Monday) - we know it' not a CCJ, but can we ask the court to suspend any action? We propose to write to the Council again and state the part in their previous letter which agreed to the payment plan - does anyone think this is a good idea. I've been reading threads concerning baliffs and how not to let them in or sign anything, i'm going to follow this advice. Does anyone know how long it takes for baliffs to respond to letters from the council regarding claiming council tax?

Hi, Can anyone tell me, if they really do have the right to auction off your goods if you are behind with your rental payments?

Hi, Our last quarterly bill from Atlantic was over £450. We have a 1 bedroom maisonette, there are only 2 of us. It's not double glazed (but there isn't anything we can do about that as we rent privately). It has night storage heaters, but 2 of them (1 upstairs and 1 downstairs) are 'convection' also, which means we can run them through the day as well. The only appliances that we have on all the time are the Fridge Freezer, everything else is usually in standby or off. We've been in contact with the electric company because we are worried that our annual bills are going to be extremely high and we won't be able to afford them. Can anyone tell if there is a way to determine if the meter is set to run fast, meaning that we clock up units at an unacceptable rate? Does anyone have any advice of how we can challenge the amount of money they are charging us - i know we can switch suppliers, but we would still owe this money to Atlantic. Thanks

I've bee corresponding with Bristol City Council as I thought we had an agreement in place to repay outstanding Council Tax. However their letter to me date a few days ago said that they had put the account in the hands of their Baliffs - Rossendales. I just put their name into Google and came up with an old thread that suggested that their tactics were a little extreme (bullying and threatening behavour). Does anyone know if they still do this? I'm still trying to go directly with the Council and sort this out, and i've asked them to suspend any further action until they have. Should i copy this to Rossendales, or do you think this would alert them early? Any helpful advice would be appreciated. By the way their is an iron garden gate that they can't get through unless I let them in, should I not let them anywhere near our front door, if they do turn up?