Telford & Wrekin council reopening old council tax cases...

[consumer_justice]

Hi all,

just a bit of inside info for anyone who might have lived in this area at any time.

Telford & Wrekin council have been going through their archives recently and finding old unpaid council tax cases going back as far as the early 90s!

They are sending these directly to a bailiff company (or more than 1, I'm unsure).

I personally think they are just trying to make some quick money or someone there is being really picky.

However, a lot of these cases have no information in their files at all so they have no way of proving they are legitimate. They don't have the dates of the missed council tax so my thought is they literally just have a list of names and an amount owed by each. They're basically trying it on.

 

What to do if you have one? Fight it with the council as soon as you hear about it, ask for proof and exact dates of when council tax was missed, if they can't provide it then there is no way they can force you to pay. Ask for a manager. Threaten legal action if necessary.

Also, important - Ask them to contact the bailiff company to put the case on hold while it is investigated, otherwise you will have a bailiff at your door for a debt you know nothing about. In my experience, if the council contact the bailiff company then they have to put the case on hold because they are effectively just working for the council.

 

Oh and there is of course this very useful post about cases over 6 years:

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/bailiffs-sheriff-officers/195735-council-tax-bill-over.html

 

In the case of telford, I still think it is easier to ask them for proof first.

 

I hope this helps someone out there!

Edited July 22, 2009 by consumer_justice

[tomtubby]

I don't normally agree with opening up old threads but this one is important because MANY local authorities (possibly in an attempt to raise additional revenue) are going back into very OLD cases and passing these accounts to bailiffs to enforce. Within the past 2 weeks we have seen cases from 1990 and 1991 !!!

 

Although as mentioned in my previous thread a local authority should be aware of the limitation period for obtaining a Liability Order we are seeing many more cases where they obtained a Liability Order 9 years ago and which they are passing to the bailiff again to enforce. There is case law on this regarding a period of 4 YEARS elapsing from issuing the Liability Order and Distress !!!