City council calls in bailiffs to recover unpaid tax bills

[rebel11]

http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/City-council-calls-bailiffs-recover-unpaid-tax/story-13874465-detail/story.html

[brassnecked]

Well there's a surprise (not) Stoke City council are unfit for purpose, and this will end up as a fee fest for the lucky bailiff firm. Wonder if they will be naughty as per what has been mentioned in the LADER report, and look for a cream off the top of the fees as a sweetner?

[seanamarts]

He said: “A nice person in a suit speaking nicely will not get people to pay.

 

“I’m not suggesting they go in brandishing a gun, but there needs to be an implied level of threat that there are consequences if you do not pay.

 

What level of threat is he implying? and the mere mention of a gun is more than a little worrying because he obviously means that the level of threat is going to be pretty high.

 

hmm has he read the national standards. Me think he has not.

 

Thats certainly a green light for bailiffs to go in heavy handed.

[seanamarts]

Councillor Dave Conway, leader of the opposition City Independents, has previously called for better council tax collection.

 

He said: “I don’t think the people responsible for collecting our council tax have done a very good job.”

 

Possibly rogue bailiffs going in and getting complained about perhaps,this costing the council in compensations, or the nice men in nice suits following the proper routes of enforcement.

[1Loretta]

and I presume that the Council's paper work will be in perfect order and they first check that anyone who owes council tax from 1993 has never moved house in the past 18 years or that they have a current address for them all.

 

In my experience Councils seem to find it very hard to understand that now and again people move house, it does seem to totally confuse them.

 

Are they checking what all the people the Council have employed during the last 18 years to collect council tax were actually doing instead of collecting all this council tax?

[tomtubby]

What bothers me about this article ( and others like it) concerns the matter of debts going back 10 years or so. In this article the debts go back as far as 1993. Unless I am wrong, such debts would surely have already been WRITTEN OFF in the accounts years ago and I would raise serious questions as to how the supposed "debts" can now be pursued.

[brassnecked]

What bothers me about this article ( and others like it) concerns the matter of debts going back 10 years or so. In this article the debts go back as far as 1993. Unless I am wrong, such debts would surely have already been WRITTEN OFF in the accounts years ago and I would raise serious questions as to how the supposed "debts" can now be pursued.

 

The council must think wrongly that they can resurrect unpaid debts whenever they like as bottom feeding DCAs do when attempting to collect on Statute Barred debts.

 

Cllr Conway will look rather silly when his bailiffs pursue the occupier of an address with old arrears, from the 1990s where a debtor is long dead, and they refuse to believe the present occupier, when told, asking for impossibilities like a death certificate of someone unknown to the occupier, who actually is up to date with THEIR council tax.

[ploddertom]

Of course if there is anyone who lives in this area who feels strongly about what may happen they could do worse than contact all the Councillors http://www.moderngov.stoke.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1 of course if you don't want to go through each picture for an email it appears to take the form:

firstname(middlename).secondname @ stoke.gov.uk

 

PT