hi guys, this week i've been informed that the shop we work at will be closing down in a month, and obviously that'll leave me jobless for a little while. i've been there a few years and will be getting a little redundancy to tide me over, but my main worry is my rent. i was wondering if anyone knows if i'll be able to apply for housing benefit in advance? i know it can take a while to get sorted out. i only pay £200 a month for my room in a shared house (not including rates), but as i'm not expecting to land into a job as soon as i get made redundant from this, i worry that the rent will chew through what little savings i have quickly. also, would i have to sign on to get the housing benefit, or can i receive it without? any advice you can give would be greatly appreciated, guys

nope, no car here. i've written a new letter to them asking pretty much this, also questioning the legitimacy of the other fees. hopefully i'll see some reward from this! thanks for the replies, both of you, the help is very much appreciated!

hi again guys, just a quick one to update you and get some more advice. i received a letter response from Rs, they gave me the baliff's version of events (which, no suprise here, gave a very different version to what actually happened), as well as a breakdown of the charges. here's what they said it was: council tax owed: £37.80 1st visit fee (15th Jan): £24.50 2nd visit fee (21st Jan): £18 Levy Fee (16th Feb): £25.50 Van Attendance (16th Feb): £110 Waiting fee (16th Feb): £60 total £274.80 now, here's the thing. i only had one visit that he left anything through the door to say he'd been, and that was for the 27th Jan, which was when I called him, not the 15th or the 21st as they claim. it was indeed the 16th of feb when i spoke to him face to face and the events happened. however, they claim in the letter he conducted a levy and added a van charge. can anyone explain what a levy is and the van charge is? he did not enter the property nor seize any goods, does this mean those charges aren't applicable? also, the 'waiting fee' is one that boggles me. i never kept him waiting except when i had to go to a cashpoint to get the payment. but even then, the total of £274.80 (ie, including this mystery waiting fee) was given to me from the start, before he knew i'd have to go to a cashpoint. can anyone advise me if the levy fee, the van attendace and the waiting fee are even applicable to my circumstances? or are they just making up numbers to justify things? any help you can give would be truly, truly appreciated! thanks in advance.

awesome, thanks very much for the help, it's given me a lot to go on, i think. and i'm pleased to see i'm not in the wrong for thinking he'd overstepped his boundaries. i've got tomorrow off so i'll be writing to Rossns and to Leicester Council, see what turns up. if i can get the money back then that's a good thing, but mostly i just want to let the baliffs know they can't pull this stuff. i appreciate you guys are here with the help. i'll keep you informed as to how it plays out, see if my case helps anyone else.

hi again, sorry to bump this, but i'd like a little more advice before going to the police with this. how should i treat it? should i speak to rossendales head office to ask them about the charge first, or would this make my case worse? if it helps anyone i denied him entry to my house, although he make a couple of attempts to step past me, and when i denied him this he made comments about 'would he like to rain on my happy little world and get friends and the police around', this was the point where he got aggressive in tone and started jacking up the fee to £500 and started calling the police. the more i think about it the more it sounds like he was trying to scare me so i wouldn't question his fraud. i have a receipt from a rossendales booklet he filled out that shows i paid £274, and it has his name on it. would this help me out?

wow, really? thanks for the quick response. does anyone else think i should do this before i go ahead and do it? not to say you're not right, just want to check up before i do anything drastic.

hi guys. i'm a bit new to all this, so i'll try and give as much info as i can, if any of you can advise me if i've been screwed over here or not that'd be great. i moved house back in november to live with some friends, and had informed the council (by writing) i was now residing with the current address. i thought i was fully paid up with my council tax from the previous property. in january 27th (this year) i had a letter from rossendales demanding £80.30 for unpaid council tax on the previous property (this letter also claimed it was a final notice, despite it being the first i'd heard from either council or rossendales). i wrote to the council asking if this was correct, and was still waiting on a response when i had a second letter on feb 4th again from rossendales telling me there was now a baliff order and they'd attended to seize goods while we were out. i called the baliff's number on the letter (J mcGarry) and explained what was going on and i was awaiting the council's response. i informed him i wasn't trying to get out of paying, if i owed it, i'll pay it. but i wanted to make sure. he seemed disgruntled by this but said he'd call back in a week. on friday i still had no response to my letter to the council so i called them, and found out i did indeed owe the money for the property, and now they've passed it onto the baliff. today the baliff came around and i told him i do owe the money, so fair enough i'll pay the £80. at which point he told me it'd gone up to £274.80. apparently someone had added a baliff charge for almost £200. i told him this was insane, he got very pushy and said i should've paid in the first place. i pointed out to him again what i'd already told him over the phone and then said i'm not disputing i owe it, and i'm willing to pay the £80 here and now. but he was very agressive and then demanded to enter the premises and take goods for the £200, unless i paid him it in cash there and then. when i said i didn't want him doing that he then jacked up the charge to £500 and started to call the police as i was denying him entry. so, at this point i had no idea what was going on, it sounded half like he was trying to con me and half like he was trying to scare me. i managed to talk him back to the £280, and he demanded it cash, and so i had to go to the cashpoint and get it. while he was filling out a receipt for this, i asked him why the baliff charge was so high, and his response was it's a standard charge. now since looking here i see all different mentions of different charges for things, i'm not sure that £200 was a valid amount or was he skimming some extra off the top for himself or the company? the whole thing's just been unreasonable and insane, never once have i said i'm not paying outright, i said from the very beginning with them if i owed it i'll pay it, i just needed to check as i'd had no mention from the council about it. if you guys can advise me on if i've been wronged or if i'm just out an extra £200 now that'd be great. thanks for reading!