Update on the Reverend Paul Nicolson's High Court appeal.

The response from the Independent Police Complaints Commission is as expected. You can only reasonably conclude that this is just another bogus taxpayer funded watchdog organisation that is complicit in assisting one public body cover for another. In this case that means Humberside police and North East Lincolnshire council. From: "!enquiries" To: outlawla Sent: Monday, December 29, 2014 Subject: Re: IPCC ref. 2014/023292 Dear Mr outlawla Thank you for you email to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) dated 19 December 2014. As advised previously, the IPCC is not the relevant appeal body for your complaint so we are unable to intervene in the appeals process. We have therefore forwarded your email on to the Professional Standards Department (PSD) of the Humberside Police for them to respond to you. As you are experiencing delays with the handling of your appeal, you may find it useful to contact the Chief Constable of the force or your local Police and Crime Commissioner, either of whom may be able to intervene in some way. Your request for records of emails received from you has been forwarded to our Freedom of Information team. Yours sincerely Customer Contact Advisor Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)

If you have Nottingham City Council as your local authority it seems like you're in luck as the bailiff fees appear optional.

The requirement was similarly under statute pre April, but the difference was that the fees were always the local authority's so I should say that is a key consideration. Regulation 52 sub-paragraph 4 SI 1992/613

From: outlawla To: "!enquiries" Sent: December 19, 2014 Subject: Re: IPCC ref. 2014/023292 Dear IPCC Re: IPCC ref. 2014/023292 I'm writing in connection with complaint reference 2014/023292 involving Humberside Police failing to take allegations of fraud seriously and the force subsequently mishandling complaints against it in regards that failure. The IPCC have explained to me (email April 27 2014) that the force itself will be considering my appeal against the outcome to the complaint and that the IPCC would not be able to intervene. However, I hope that the organisation may now intervene considering the force's continued failure in meeting its obligation to the taxpayer. There is still no outcome to the appeal and expect that it is the forces intention never to investigate the matter. The last contact regarding the appeal was a letter dated 27 August 2014 from Humberside Police which was to advise that the complaint would be referred to a named Detective Chief Inspector who would be in contact in due course. We are almost 4 months on from that date and no further contact from Humberside Police has been made. It therefore looks like we're dealing with much more than the public body's negligence in serving the taxpayer and wrongly recording complaints in a bid to prevent a taxpayer escalating concerns. We appear to have an out of control rogue police force in Humberside and I welcome the organisations view to my recommendation that a thorough investigation into the forces policies and procedures is undertaken. I would also ask if you could confirm holding records of emails sent to the IPCC's '!enquiries' address, and possibly '!NorthCasework' and if so provide the contents as many of my emails in relation to these matters have disappeared from my system. Although no longer having the email I have found details sufficiently reliable to satisfy myself that one was sent to the '!enquiries' address on 16 April 2014. Although unlikely and there is no way I could check, the disappearance of files and a disproportionate amount of data being transferred from my system through the internet is bound to makes one wonder if this is more than just coincidence, especially when you consider the false statement with regards a fictitious visit by one of its Detective Inspectors to my home to explain the reasons why the allegations were not of a criminal nature. As I have mentioned already I would like the organisations view to my recommendation that a thorough investigation into the forces policies and procedures is undertaken. There is no doubt in my mind that the overall person responsible for this fiasco should be answering to charges of Misconduct in Public Office. Yours sincerely outlawla P.S. Concerning your suggestion to contact the Chief Constable or the Police and Crime Commissioner for Humberside I have already had disappointing responses from taking these routes. As you would probably imagine, both merely hide behind the dysfunctional statutory process which police forces have of course mastered ways to exploit to their advantage.

Normally, once the summons has been issued the authority add those costs to the outstanding amount which must be included in the payment to stop them making the application to the Magistrates' court for a liability order. You can only guarantee avoiding the costs if you were to pay the outstanding liability (£52) before the summons is served (which may be Tuesday). Because you are on reduced payment the council may have a policy (depending on the authority) that agrees to waive the cost, if for example you sign up for direct debit or other arrangement. The question of whether you could challenge the costs after receiving a summons even if they're paid before the court hearing is interesting. A response from Reigate and Banstead Borough Council suggests that you could. Also Torfaen Council. Leicestershire & Rutland Court service recognise that the costs are open to challenge:

The story (below link) typifies council tax system failures where staff take a back seat and leave their computers to get on with it. Students troubled by council tax demands Much of the costs are attributable to checking summonses individually etc. before they are issued. There are definitely grounds for challenging court costs on this basis because the expenditure is fictitious.

When the term "issue" is used in the context of a Council Tax Summons, it merely means the Justices Clerk or legal advisor (if they're not the same thing) authorises a complaint list (probably delivered electronically) which has typically – depending on the size of the billing authority – between a couple of hundred and several thousand names on it. The bigger concern in this area is that local authorities are recklessly making applications and courts recklessly rubber stamping these, as opposed the practice of councils "distributing" the summons. Note, the deliberate avoidance of the word "issue"). However, there are plenty of other areas to challenge the lawfulness of these liability order applications.

This is 'the article' I think.

Typical idiotic statement from a council representative. As if councillors have this in mind when there's likely to be backhanders from building firms for granting planning permission.

Ordinarily that would be the course of action to take, but this force is a law unto itself. Contacting the IPCC in the first instance would speed things up by around 6 months. It could be that Humberside Police have an arrangement in place to restrict contact that I'm oblivious to. I'm sure there's pressure on the police not to pursue a case that might impact on the effectiveness of bailiff operations. I'm certain this has happened with HM Court Service regarding the Magistrates court pulling out all the stops to prevent a case I'm trying to get into the High Court.

Email to Council leaders in England and Wales: Asked not to seek costs for council tax liability orders until they review their legality and rationality.....

Probably the local authority would add all the accruing fees to the debtor's account and never remove them. They would probably not be kept separate either thus giving the potential for future debtor's payments to be wrongly allocated to the previous year's account with the consequence of that putting the debtor in arrears all over again and the cycle continuing for ever......

Completely agree! It's all about making money and especially now the Tory government is putting pressure on councils to make up the shortfall created by the massively reduced funding. Ironically the government boasts about how it has kept council tax frozen (or at least to minimal increases) but keeps quite about all the creative ways local authorities have resorted to plug the gap with increased charges and penalties. On the issue of court costs I notice the figure you quote is £75 for Wales. I understood that up until recently the cap was £70 but know that Welsh local authorities have requested that the cap is reviewed as a matter of priority. Has this already happened? This is a quote from Monmouthshire Council: Presently with there being no statutory limit in England, court costs are challengeable (at least theoretically), so anyone is entitled to put their case before the bench at a liability order hearing. If a cap was introduced – although the reasonableness would still be challengeable – the average intelligence of council officials and HMCTS personnel involved wouldn't extend to understanding that such a cap would be no more than a statutory limit (therefore still challengeable), and would cite regulations wrongly (but successfully) to discredit the legitimacy of anyone's challenge to the level. Many local authorities have massively increased costs over recent years and even the Welsh cap at £70 (75) is proportionately high compared with what most councils imposed a year or two ago. Haringey council's, along with others' costs are exceptionally extortionate but there are still some which have standard costs below the Welsh limit. Inevitably those councils would immediately increase up to the statutory limit. Unless a cap was introduced in England which accurately reflected the costs "reasonably incurred" (they would never do this) then it could be just handing it on a plate for local authorities and Magistrates' courts to get away with what they do. The scope for the taxpayer to contest the costs would almost completely be lost. Another matter which is not unlikely is that the regulation relevant to costs is ultra vires.

There might be more documents under Agenda 10 of this link.

Another 5 councils previously had it on the cards to bring enforcement in-house and ditch their bailiff contractors. Flintshire Council CABINET Tuesday 15th JULY 2014 ENFORCEMENT ACTION FOR THE RECOVERY OF COUNCIL TAX AND NATIONAL NON DOMESTIC RATES The other 4 (Christchurch, East Dorset, North Dorset and Poole councils) make up the Stour Valley and Poole Partnership.

No contact from Humberside Police (since 27 August 2014) regarding appeal against its various failings. This is why the IPCC is wrong to delegate the job of investigating a complaint against the police to the police force itself. There should be a charge a taxpayer can bring against a police force equivalent to "wasting Police time".

Something has never quite added up in the way regulations are formulated with regards to court costs in Council Tax recovery. Paragraph 5 of Regulation 34 of the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992 provides that local authorities may impose court costs on a Council Taxpayer in respect of issuing a summons before the case is even brought before the bench. This, as would be understood by most people is not the way a party to court proceedings is normally awarded costs. It may be that the reason regulations provide for the authority to claim a sum of costs without the court's involvement is because the statutory instrument is ultra vires. The primary legislation laying down the boundaries from which Regulation 34 derives is the Local Government Finance Act 1992. The relevant provision of Schedule 4 paragraph (3) (liability orders) of the 1992 Act confers power on the secretary of state as below: As suggested, the statutory instrument with regards regulation 34 appears to have been enacted without the legal powers of the primary legislation. The primary legislation (as indicated above "liability orders") does not give legal powers such that the statutory instrument may include provision for the billing authority to impose costs before it has obtained a court order, however, this is what regulation 34(5) provides: This suggests that if the respective secretaries of state (England and Wales) had made the regulations within the powers conferred on them, regulation 34 would not have made provision that is included in paragraph (5). Additionally Sub-paragraph (3) of paragraph 3 to Schedule 4 of the 1992 Act confers powers on the relevant secretaries of state that the regulations may include provision that, where the sum payable is paid after the order has been applied for but before it is made, the magistrates’ court shall nonetheless make the order in respect of a sum in respect of the costs incurred in applying for it. The statutory instrument (Council Tax Regulations) with regards regulation 34(8) appears to have been enacted without the legal powers of the primary legislation. Regulation 34(8) is as follows: The primary legislation does not give legal powers such that the regulations may include provision that the court shall make the order in respect of a sum of an amount equal to the costs reasonably incurred by the authority in "MAKING THE APPLICATION". There is an important distinction in that the primary legislation provides for an order in respect of the costs incurred in "APPLYING" for it. This means that if the respective secretaries of state had made the regulations within the powers conferred on them, regulation 34(8) would make provision for where the sum payable is paid after a liability order has been applied for but before it is made, the court shall nonetheless (if so requested by the charging authority) make the order in respect of a sum of an amount equal to the costs reasonably incurred by the authority for issuing the summons. Of importance is that this would essentially be a lesser sum than whatever sum is claimed to be an amount equal to the costs reasonably incurred by the council in obtaining the order (Regulation 34(7)(b)). You would therefore expect that the Council Tax legislation with regards regulation 34 to be more in line with Business Rates in Regulation 12 of the Non-Domestic rating (Collection and Enforcement) (Local lists) Regulations 1989.

Sulffolk District Council is one of the seven Anglia councils planning to launch a revenues enforcement service, allowing them to bypass commercial bailiff firms. The Cabinet report entitled "Anglia Revenues Partnership (ARP) - Internal Enforcement Agency Proposals" sent to Fenland (A similar report will have been sent to Suffolk Coastal) at the last paragraph of the "Summary" where it refers to making sure that residents are treated fairly and keeping fees as low as possible, should be quoted to them as a reminder. My guess though is their principle interest lies in "retaining the income generated by Enforcement actions for the Council tax payers of the partner authorities."

Why do you think it is after repeatedly having high court judgments rule against councils profiteering – with the Communities and Local Government secretary criticising councils (albeit phoney criticism) – they continue making obviously challengeable decisions to thieve from the council taxpaying public to bridge the gap created by Tory cuts? Those CEOs earning six figure salaries who are responsible, obviously know that they are well protected and even in failure will walk away with huge amounts of taxpayer's money because to have them brought to justice is likely to cost even more in legal fees to hold them to account. With the seven Anglian authorities (Anglia Revenues Partnership) clearly demonstrating their intention to profiteer from enforcement, you wonder if the next legal challenge will be (in light of the commercial direction councils are increasingly heading) against local authorities, failing to market Council Tax as a security; an option to buy as an investment similarly to how fund managers would promote their latest product along with responsible advice as to the risk of investing in "Council Tax" with of course a share certificate, detailing the foreseeable profits and anticipated dividend payout.

Anglia councils plan own bailiff service Seven councils are planning to launch a revenues enforcement service, allowing them to bypass commercial bailiff firms. Breckland, East Cambs, Fenland, Forest Heath, St Edmundsbury, Suffolk Coastal and Waveney Councils. The Cabinet report (Anglia Revenues Partnership (ARP) - Internal Enforcement Agency Proposals) at paragraph 4.6 shows there's a financial benefit of doing away with their contractors.

http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2014/56.html

HARINGEY COUNCIL LOSES TO LOCAL CAMPAIGNERS IN SUPREME COURT BATTLE ABOUT 2012 COUNCIL TAX CONSULTATION The Judgment below: Judgment 29 October 2014

Remember Leicester City council being found misrepresenting its expenditure by doubling the number of staff hours attributable to recovery work in order to justify its court costs. When questioned about this it replied: Then, on 10 September 2014, further arguments were put forward as to why Leicester City Council's accounting system was not a proper way of calculating the level of costs. In it's latest defence the finger is pointed at the Magistrates' Court " We still believe that our approach in calculating the costs level is correct. As you are aware the costs amount has also been agreed by Court .

Something wrong with the reporting here. I doubt "the amount of money they collected in council tax last year actually fell". More like the amount collected was higher because more tax was levied because of the benefit reforms. The percentage may have fallen but that's a different matter.