sequestration for council tax I rpovenly don't owe

[courtchange]

My council (Edinburgh) is applying to sequestrate me for council tax I don't owe.

 

The disputed sum is big but I have more capital than its value.

 

I have been making a repeated appeal annually, clearly on grounds of error of calculation.

 

By law, anyone charged council tax has an absolute automatic right to do that, and the grounds may be anything the appellant perceives as an error of calculation.

This is explicit in all the public information on council tax appeals and in the Local Government Finance Act 1992.

It is a matter of simple exact statue law that has so shades of interpretation.

 

The council has no veto over my appeal: if it disagrees with it it must contest it.

 

But the council has for 8 years been ignoring all my appeals and refusing to recognise them,

on grounds of claiming that they are - not relevant appeals -

 

It has kept on sending me sheriff officer's letters in pursuit of the appealed sums.

 

I always answered those in full, only to get eventual repetitions of them ignoring my explanations

or else arbitrarily stating that the council has said my appeals are not appeals and do not count.

Never have they answered my point that the council has no power to do that.

 

Now the council has taken straight to sequestration a dispute that should have gone through a council tax appeal.

Its claims that I owe the sum simply ignores my appeals, hence must be based on claiming a power so to so, contrary to all the public info on the appeals system.

 

The council has always known it could dispose of the issue just by contesting one appeal and after that my council tax position would be normal again.

It can't be portrayed as reaonsable for the council to pigheadedly refuse to contest an appeal, knowing that and knowing the appeal is being repeated annually, and instead knowingly to let the situation drag on for years.

 

The council must also be wrong, if it thinks it has any case, knowingly to wait while a sum it intended ever to claim mounts up and becomes more intimidating. That is obviously bullying.

It has never taken any of the less drastic approaches to enforcement, e.g. bank accounts.

 

I have lodged as my defence, those points on the action's excessiveness, and my documentary record of the years of lodged and ignored appeals,

and the Local Government Finance Act and the public info on the right to make appeals.

 

It would be illegal for the court to find against me, for it would abolish the principle that folks should believe published official information on the law,

and then there would be no basis to expect me to believe and obey anything the sequestrator said either.

 

I have put that to both the pursuing solicitor and the nominated trustee, as a point that voids the case against me and proves only my case can be right. Neither has yet answered.

This needs all the human rights interest it can get.

 

I have mailed to the EHRC about it but it can take a week to know if they will respond.

 

I have mild autism and am actively involved in a services project run by a university that follows how services/public bodies treat folks and has already had an interest in my problem before it came to this point.

It also means I should be entitled to advocacy in any dealings with the sequestrators.

 

I already have a reference to contact citizen's advice within the court.

My councillor is the Lord Provost and good about keeping his community involvements...

 

My point about all these interested parties and as many others as possible, is so as not to be alone and unseen which would encourage the court to decide against me.

 

In order to establish that a decision against me is illegal, the highest possible number of parties need to have been alerted in advance of the day,

and unless their existence deters the wrong decision from happening, they watch it happen.

 

Then they would know instantly that the decision has abolished the believability of any published and written law to rely on as true,

and hence that I can't be expected to understand and believe any written law that the sequestrators tell me to cooperate with.

That absurdity gets thrown back at the system to prove the decision illegal and unworkable.

 

I think what I'm asking for here is ways to raise interest. Know any sympathetic journalists or organisations who are good at responding and making public fuss about such issues?

 

Can Action Group itself raise some public concern about councils bullying folks like this?

[courtchange]

Putting it simply:Human rights campaigning interest is needed, from any source. A dispute that should take place in a council tax appeal, and which I originally lodged as one, can't be taken to sequestration instead. A council can't be allowed to choose to ignore a council tax appeal, repeatedly, and later take the same money to sequestration.The law, and the public info on it, says there is an automatic right to make council tax appeals on any item you perceive as an error of calculation. It does not say the council has any veto over this, any power to define an appeal as not relevant and refuse to recognise it. Let alone to pursue you through court ignoring the appeal's existence. the council's petititon to the court nowhere even mentions my appeals in any way, that they were ever made. A court must not be allowed to go with that, when I have given all the hsitory of the appeals as my defence evidence.

[IdaInFife]

So is your appeal and actual valid appeal or is it to just to prove a point?

 

Also there is no hearing for council tax debts they are an automatic process and you have no leave of court for it so that route doesn't exist.

[courtchange]

It is an error of calculation, an item that should be taken account of in the calculation. By the written law that automatically makes it a valid appeal: any item perceived and explained by the appellant as an error of calculation is a valid appeal. Hence the court would act illegally to say otherwise, and I have already written so in my defence papers.

 

I know the initial system for the council registering its claim to a council tax debt violates human rights by not providing for a defence case. But the sequestration procedure does provide for making a defence case, including when the case is only about council tax, as this one is.

[IdaInFife]

have you paid the difference?

 

sorry yes during the sequestration then you can lodge Answers so that it goes to diet proof for a defense.

 

What stage are you at?

[courtchange]

Yes.

At the stage of cited and waiting for the hearing.

[MARTIN3030]

Have you not thought to contact these;

 

http://www.spso.org.uk/

 

Scottish Public Services Ombudsman

 

 

 

We are the final stage for handling complaints about public services in Scotland.

We deal with complaints about councils, the National Health Service, housing associations, the Scottish Government and its agencies and departments, colleges and universities, prisons, and most Scottish public bodies.

[courtchange]

I read on their site that you can't take things to SPSO if a court case about them is in progress.

[courtchange]

On the eve of court, with hours to go, I have now got the council saying they are going to talk and to ask the sheriff to "continue" the case for 4 weeks to allow discussion.

[courtchange]

Won this case. All through the maximum period of "continuation" the council never supplied the responsible official who could actually give answers, to attend either of the 2 meetings it had with me, and never offered a substantiation of the view that the law allowed it to refuse recognition to my appeals. So the outcome is, extracted from them only in the last few days left: they had to allow an appeal case to proceed and thus they had to dismiss their own cased in court. So I won.