Please help- Bailiffs collecting non-domestic rate

[rebecca12]

I was recently visited by a bailiff on behalf of my council for falling behind on my business rate as my standing order was not confirmed due to an error on my part.

 

It was a very embarrassing ordeal as my customers were present and I was very surprised to see the bailiffs as the council did not inform me of this visit nor that they had not received payments. Had i known i would have made payment.

 

I called the council to remonstrate that i wasn't made aware of this and they said it was not their responsibility as I am behind on my payment so I reluctantly paid the bailiff as he was intimidating mentioning the longer he is here the more I will have to pay for his fees. Before leaving he did say the fees will be approx £250.

 

After following up with the council for an itemised bill the bailiff sent me the following:

 

Payment by C/C £113.94

Sch 5 Head H £24.50

Attendance / Van £150.00

Levy fee £111.00

Waiting £120.00

 

- I was not told there would be further credit card fees (i have paid the council using credit card before without paying extra fees)

- Nothing was removed from my property so do not see why they have charged £150 for van fees.

- I do not know what the 'levy'' or the 'Sch 5 Head H' fees are?

- waiting fee as he was at the premises for just over an hour

 

These charges look bogus and was wondering if anyone can advise as I feel I have been over charged?

 

Many Thanks

[ploddertom]

Have you confirmed what was owing with the Council? You need to speak to someone at the Council and ask the following questions:

1 - how many Liability Orders they have against you

2 - the dates they were obtained

3 - the addresses they were for

4 - the period of time each covers

5 - how much each one was for

6 - how much is still outstanding

7 - the dates they were passed on for enforcement

8 - the dates & amounts of any payments

[ploddertom]

How many visits did the Bailiff make to you? You need to send off to them for a complete breakdown as looking at the figures you have you are due monies back. Here's an example of what to use - adapt as you see fit. Send initially by email followed by a copy in the post. I assume it is Bristow & Sutor - [email protected]

 

"From:

My Name

My Address

 

To:

Acme Bailiff Co

Bailiff House

 

Ref: Account No: 123456

 

Dear Sir

 

With reference to the above account, Can you please provide me with a breakdown of the charges.

 

This includes:

a - the time & date of any Bailiff action that incurred a Fee.

b - the reason for the fee.

c - the name(s) of the Bailiff(s) that attended on each occasion a Fee was charged.

d - the name(s) of the Court(s) the Bailiff(s) was/were Certificated at.

e - the date of the Certification.

 

This is not a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act S7 1998 so does not incur a fee of £10. You are obliged to provide this information.

 

I require this information within 14 days.

 

Yours faithfully

 

Ripped off customer"

[rebecca12]

Thanks for your help!

 

Below is what I have sent to the bailiffs

 

--------------------------------------------

 

Sent 07/03/13 17:00

 

Dear Sir or madam,

 

Further to my email below, please can you provide the following additional details

 

a - the name of the Bailiff that attended my shop b - the name of the Court the Bailiff was Certificated at.

c - the date of the Certification.

d - details of the Liability Order you have against me

- the dates it was obtained

- the period of time the order covers

- the date it was passed for enforcement

 

This is not a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act S7 1998 so does not incur a fee of £10. You are obliged to provide this information.

 

Kindly respond.

 

Regards

 

------------------------------------------

 

sent 07/03/13 am

 

Dear Sir or Madam,

 

The bailiff at the time mentioned that the fee will be in the region of £200 but you have charged me over £500 for a single visit! This is underhanded misrepresentation is not fair and unethical.

 

1. There was no mention of credit card fees otherwise I would have arranged another method of payment. Why was I not informed of this considering this is a significant amount (~20% of the overall fees)?

2. Please elaborate what ' Sch 5 Head H' is? What does this charge relate to in plain English?

3. Nothing was removed from the property so why am I being charged for Van? What portion of the £150 is for the Van fees?

4. I am not familiar with all these fees; please explain what the Levy fee is?

5. Waiting - please provide exact details. Your colleague mentioned there will be further charges for "going past the hour"- are you legally entitled to do this or is this an intimidation tactic? More importantly I was delayed due to an error on your colleagues part as he keyed in the address incorrectly and I had to call my bank to find out the reason- to me it seems like your company did this on purpose so you can increase your fees. I do not see why I am having to pay this for a mistake on your colleagues part especially considering it was actually my time that was wasted.

 

Amount

Payment by C/C £84.00

Payment by C/C £29.94

Sch 5 Head H £24.50

Attendance / Van £150.00

Levy fee £111.00

Waiting £120.00

 

Please advise me on the above asap and I will also be in touch with the council regarding the above as they appointed you.

 

Regards

[rebecca12]

The Bailiff made one visit in which I paid of the balance in full. Nothing was taken or removed from my property

[rebecca12]

email just sent to my council

 

------------------------------------

 

Dear xxxx

 

I have received a statement from the councils bailiffs however the charges look obscure so I am awaiting further details from them (see attached email).

 

From my observation these charges seem unreasonable and over and above what is specified by the law and guidelines provided by Local Government Ombudsman and I would like to make a formal complaint regarding these bogus fees considering nothing was levied. Please advise me of your complaint procedures?

 

As mentioned since our last communication in which I did make payment, I did not realise that my standing instructions were not in place so I was shocked and surprised to find a bailiff turning up at my premises whilst customers were present without been sent any letters of this impending action. Had I known that the payments had failed I would have certainly rectified this situation without the need for such drastic and unannounced action. Furthermore shouldn’t the council have served me with a statutory notice prior to this? I am deeply upset that this could have been avoided as well as the objectionable practices of your appointed bailiffs.

 

Please can you confirm the following?

1 – details of the Liability Orders issued

2 - the dates it was obtained

3 - the period of time the order covers

4 - the dates they were passed on for enforcement

 

Kind regards

[ploddertom]

How much in total have you paid to the Bailiff?

[rebecca12]

£2650 of which £513 relate to bailiffs fees

[ploddertom]

Be back later but no doubt there will be others along in the meantime.

[ploddertom]

 

Payment by C/C £113.94

Sch 5 Head H £24.50

Attendance / Van £150.00

Levy fee £111.00

Waiting £120.00

 

 

Did he make a list of goods that he seized? Did he give you a Notice of Seizure (Form 7) - a legal requirement? If he did list any goods can you describe them exactly as they appear on the Notice of Seizure?

 

As for the fees, he may only charge those fees which are allowed by the Regulations if the fee does not appear then it cannot be charged.

Payment by card - not allowed as no Regulation for it - Day v Davies 1938

Sch 5 Head H - cannot be charged as no goods removed

Attendance/Van - cannot be charged at same time a levy fee is charged

Levy Fee - according to my calculations you should have owed some £5300!

Waiting Time - not allowed as no Regulation

 

It would be interesting to ask them which Regulation allows them to charge the Card Fee & Waiting Time. Also how they calciulate the "levy". For my money this is a blatant case of excessive overcharging and would deserve a Form 4 Complaint against the Bailiff. I fail to see how this could be explained away as an "Admin error".

[tomtubby]

Ploddertom.

 

Well put.

 

Rebecca, to save tim reading the posts again....was a levy made on goods by the bailiff and were you given a Notice of Seizure?

 

I know that it is only a small point but it is very serious indeed as to WHY this particular local authority are allowing their agent to charge a Head H fee to your account. This fee was the subject of a highly critical report from the Local Government Ombudsman last July and the LGO made a finding of Maladministration against Blaby District Council.

 

There are SIGNIFICANT errors in the fees charged.

 

Please post back concerning the "levy".

[brassnecked]

Might be worth sending Formal complaint to council using the LGO case referred to by TT, and along with intimating you are considering a Fiorm 4 against the bailiff, that in the circumstances they, as they are liable for the actions of their agent the bailiff whatever they claim, that the council should also consider submitting a Form 5 for that bailiff as he has brought the council into disrepute.

[rebecca12]

Did he make a list of goods that he seized? Did he give you a Notice of Seizure (Form 7) - a legal requirement? If he did list any goods can you describe them exactly as they appear on the Notice of Seizure?

 

As for the fees, he may only charge those fees which are allowed by the Regulations if the fee does not appear then it cannot be charged.

Payment by card - not allowed as no Regulation for it - Day v Davies 1938

Sch 5 Head H - cannot be charged as no goods removed

Attendance/Van - cannot be charged at same time a levy fee is charged

Levy Fee - according to my calculations you should have owed some £5300!

Waiting Time - not allowed as no Regulation

 

It would be interesting to ask them which Regulation allows them to charge the Card Fee & Waiting Time. Also how they calciulate the "levy". For my money this is a blatant case of excessive overcharging and would deserve a Form 4 Complaint against the Bailiff. I fail to see how this could be explained away as an "Admin error".

 

Thanks for your help the bailiffs have not yet responded but the council sent an email this morning with the following which seems to suggest they are now paying attention without brushing me off as they have done up till yesterday

 

"Thank you for your further email.

I am looking into the matter and will get back to you at the beginning of next week"

[rebecca12]

Hi tomtubby

 

Nothing was inspected/taken/seized from my premises and I paid of the balance in full. I have questioned the levy with the council and i'm waiting for a response on all these charges. I have asked to make an official complaint and have asked for their complaints procedure which I am also waiting for. I will follow up with your point above in my next email.

[rebecca12]

Hi brassnecked what is a form 4/5 used for? I will ask the council but first will be good to understand. Thanks

[brassnecked]

A Form 4 is a complaint to the court that issued the bailiffs certificate, to question his firness to hold it, loss of certificate means he can no longer work as a bailiff, it is not to be undertaken lightly, and the evidence must be compelling as it is not without risk. A form 5 is where the council themselves send a report about a bailiff, essentially the outcome is similar.

[rebecca12]

Hi Ploddertom

 

I received the following response from the council on Mon- Bailiffs are yet to respond.

 

Apparently I was already in 'default' and they do not need to give me a statutory notice 14 days before bailiffs arrival- is this correct?

 

Thanks

---

".. I have been speaking with Jacobs today and they are going to respond direct to you

with their findings on Wednesday.

 

With regard to the Council’s actions in relation to this matter, I can confirm that an arrangement

was set up as a sign of good faith on 24.09.12 as, at this point, you had lost the right to pay by instalments.

 

A summonses was issued on 14.09.12, with a liability order being granted on 12.10.12 for the period

20.01.12 – 01.04.13. The debt was sent to Jacobs on 31.01.13.

 

It is your responsibility to make sure payments are made and we are not required to write

out again when the arrangement, that has been made as a sign of good faith, defaults due to non payment.

 

If I can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Kind regards

[tomtubby]

I am sorry but the response from the council is NOT sufficient and if this was my debt, I would respond to advise that I would like the Formal Complaint to be considered as a Stage Two Complaint.

 

I will respond later but in the meantime....please think very carefully about a Form 4 complaint. It would seem to me that the fees charged by the bailiff are fees that he is TOLD to charge by his employer and almost certainly, the responsibility for the fees is to the LOCAL AUTHORITY.

[rebecca12]

Thanks tomtubby. Do I send a Form 4 complaint to the council or the magistrate?

[uk007]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you need to hand deliver the form 4 to the court where the bailiff got his certificate or am I wrong

[ploddertom]

A Form 4 is a last resort. You must wait until you receive a response for the Bailiffs, and even then you must be seen to doing things correctly by using their compalaints process first. There will obviously be a good chance they will claim a "rare admin error" in which case your Form 4 would be superfluous. There may be another way of tackling this but lets see what you get back first.

[rebecca12]

I received a reply from Jacobs the bailiffs yesterday (see below) which contains a pack of lies.

1. The bailiff spoke to me over the phone as I was in London whilst he was at my premises.

2. The bailiff did not even ask to sign a Walking Possession Agreement so his claim that I refused is a lie

3. Myself nor my staff were left with any paperwork.According to my staff they saw him note down a few immaterial items such as cash register and a fridge in the front of the shop. He did not go inside/ behind counter or upstairs stock room.

4. The bailiff was not at the premises for "over two hours". He was there max 1 hr 15 mins and a good half an hour was wasted as the bailiff incorrectly processed my details as I had to call my bank to find out why my payments were failing (apparently the Bailiff was entering the wrong address I presume this was on purpose, nonetheless his fault )

5. At no point was I informed of any extra credit card fees fees so their claim is not correct that I was informed of this.

6. I read somewhere that I should have been given a 14 days statutory notice prior to bailiff action. Is this correct relating to non-domestic rate as I was not sent any communication? The last one I received was last Sep/Oct but I did make payments after this.

 

I think I am not going to respond to the bailiff directly as there own conclusion is factually incorrect and biased and will push this back on to the council city the cases you mentioned in the thread.

 

Any further advise will be much appreciated !

 

Response from bailiff

----------------------------------------------------

Following your recent correspondence to both ourselves and the local Authority we advise that we have provided xxxxxxxxxxx Borough Council with a report of the action taken on your account a copy of which is below.

 

• Both accounts were issued to us in January 2013 and our first point of contact is when the bailiff attends the premises. As this case is for Non Domestic Rates the account is immediately issued to our Enforcement Bailiff to collect payment in full or remove goods only.

 

• The account was issued to our Enforcement Bailiff, Mr xxxxxx, who made his one and only visit to the above property on the 11th February 2013. He successfully met the owner who requested time to obtain the monies. ]Our bailiff completed a levy on items within the property but the owner refused to sign the Walking Possession Agreement.

 

• Our bailiff advised that the account must be paid in full immediately to prevent the removal of the items listed on the Notice of Seizure of Goods and Inventory.

 

• After being at the property for over two hours, the owner paid the account in full including the costs incurred for Mr xxxxxx visit.

 

• Costs incurred were £111.00 levy Fee, £24.50 Schedule 5 Header H Fee, an Enforcement Fee of £150.00 as our Bailiff was attending with a view to removing goods and he was at the premises for over two hours, Waiting Time totalling £120.00 was also charged.

 

• The outstanding balance was paid in full by credit card which incurs a further charge totalling £113.94

 

 

In response to the specific points you raise , we have the following to advise:-

We note your comments regarding our Bailiff mentioning that the fees would be in the region of £200.00; however our Bailiffs are unable to specify what the total charges will be in advance of the action taken. This is because they don't know how the situation will unfold whilst at the premises i.e. if an uplift of goods will take place etc or how long they will be at the property for. Therefore Mr xxxxxx would not have told you the figure stated.

 

1. Our Bailiff states that you were made aware of the credit card charges when making the transaction.

 

2. The Schedule 5 Header H Redemption Fee is raised at the time the goods come into our legal control (Le. at the time of the levy). Payment can only be discharged at the end when all other fees and debt are cleared. We confirm that the charge has been correctly applied and will remain on this account.

 

3. The charge of £150 is an Enforcement Fee for the Bailiff attending with a view to removing goods. It is not determined by the vehicle the Bailiff attends in. Should our Bailiff feel it is necessary to remove the items, then the appropriate vehicle will be arranged and further costs incurred for this

 

4. Our Bailiff will secure the debt on behalf of the client by levying distress (taking legal control of goods). He will complete the Notice of Seizure of Goods and Inventory and a Levy Fee is incurred for this.

 

5. Waiting Time is a standard charge of £60.00 which is charged for every hour after the first hour and as the Bailiff was at the property for 2 hours, 20 minutes the total charged of £120.00 is correct.

 

In summary we are satisfied with the action taken. Prior to instructing us to enforce the Liability Order, the Local Authority send documentation to the persons named offering the opportunity to pay by instalments to prevent recovery action. Therefore when the account is passed to us to collect on their behalf, the full amount is payable.

 

For the collection of Non Domestic Rates the account is issued straight to an Enforcement Bailiff and arrangements are not acceptable which is why Mr xxxxxx insisted on payment in full immediately.

 

Whilst the fees may seem high, we confirm they are in accordance with legislation and we consider them to be reasonable for the work carried out and as such you remain liable for them.

 

We confirm that the account is now paid in full and monies have been remitted to xxxxxxxxxx Borough Council.

 

Please note that a copy of this response has been sent to the Local Authority for their records.

 

We trust the above is satisfactory and brings the matter to a conclusion.

 

Yours sincerely

Complaints Manager

Edited March 17, 2013 by ploddertom
Removed names

[ploddertom]

I made comment about the fees etc back in Post 10 and still stick by them. The company will stick by their Bailiff no matter what until such time of course they realise they are not going to get away with it. You will now need to turn this into a Formal Complaint by writing to the Council - the chances are they will back the Bailiff which in my mind is a good thing for you. I would also urge you to contact your local Councillor(s) and ask they help - if you live within the Borough then you can ask those that have responsibilities for where the business is located & also those for where you live. This will not resolve itself overnight unfortunately and may take some time.

[rebecca12]

Thanks for your help! really appreciate all your plus the others input as i was clueless on what to do.

I will reply back to the council asking to raise this as a formal complaint and will arrange a meeting with my local councilors. I am waiting for the bailiff to give me details of the court and judge so I can file a Form 4 as what they have done is criminal fraud and Jacobs complaints procedure is futile as they have failed to acknowledge some of my key points and have taken a one sided stance in favour of their bailiff.

[rebecca12]

I made comment about the fees etc back in Post 10 and still stick by them. The company will stick by their Bailiff no matter what until such time of course they realise they are not going to get away with it. You will now need to turn this into a Formal Complaint by writing to the Council - the chances are they will back the Bailiff which in my mind is a good thing for you. I would also urge you to contact your local Councillor(s) and ask they help - if you live within the Borough then you can ask those that have responsibilities for where the business is located & also those for where you live. This will not resolve itself overnight unfortunately and may take some time.

 

Also the' bailiff ' that came round does not appear to be certified - is this a legal requirement to enforce a liability order?

 

I have also called up the County Court Bulk Centre on 0845 4085302 who confirmed J Branson is not on their certified register or the list of names for Jacobs bailiff

 

http://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/enforcement-officers

http://certificatedbailiffs.justice.gov.uk/CertificatedBailiffs/