Rec'd summary warrant from Sherrif's Office over Council Tax non-payment

[kirstyo]

In my experience of dealing with sheriff officers for council tax, which unfortunatley has been a lot they are usually not too bad negotiating payment plans but you must stick to them if a summary warrant has been issued, if you dont they will arrest your wages. mine were arrested after two weeks missed payments even although i called and explained that i had done my back in and could not physically get out to pay it. Each company is different I guess but that is my experience

[kirstyo]

Totally, I had my wages arrested twice both times very quickly after missing a payment

[kirstyo]

they really are bandits arent they? i dread to think the amount of charges i have paid them over the last few years and if i have to send them proof one more time that i am now a full time student and no longer live at the address they are chasing me for i swear to god im going to go to their office and give them what for

[kirstyo]

fortunatley for stirling park i no longer live in their area, or i would be going to see them almost every month. although the last letter they sent was from a local address now that i think of it. I have a payment card for mine but my issue is more with the council refusing to apply my student discount no matter how many times i send them the proof they say i havent sent it or i have sent it for a previous year etc

[kirstyo]

If you are in Edinburgh then it will be different sheriff officers than I dealt with in ayrshire but my experience is that they will always make you up your offer slightly saying that is the very least they can accept for example i offered 10 pound a month and they upped it to 18 saying this was the least they could possibly accept to avoid wages arrestment, of course i knew they would do that and was quite comfortable with 18 pounds a month.

 

They will not go away at this stage believe me, they will follow through and arrest any income you have. People are possibly able to ignore them at an earlier stage but this has already been to court and a summary warrant granted so there is no chance of it going away. If they are threatening a wages arrest then you need to come to an arrangement with them now to stop this from happening, there is no way to stop it once it has started believe me i tried everything to get out of mine.

 

Like i say offer them slightly less that you want to pay then agree to their slightly higher counter offer and as long as you stick to the payments you will be fine. They arrested my wages for less than 500 quid so dont think they wont do it because of the amount because they will and it will cost you more in charges etc also your boss is actually allowed to charge you every time they make the payment on your account, mine never did thankfully but he showed me all the paper work that showed he could if he wanted to.

[kirstyo]

Does it say what the extra amount is for?

[kirstyo]

So they have just added this years (14-15) on top then? That is what they do, no matter what stage in the year it is, if the council send it to the sheriff officers they send the whole year. Can you give us a bit more info? what exactly does the letter say? I take it you are paying the sheriff officers for a previous year but not paying this years?

[kirstyo]

Perhaps contacting them and telling them that you simply cant afford to pay any more will work, but you might need to increase it a little to keep them off your back. If you are entitled to any sort of discount you can still apply for it through the council and they will pass it on to the sheriff officers who will reduce the bill accordingly.

 

 

This is exactly what happened to me for a good few years, I was paying the arrears so couldn't keep up with the current year and ended up stuck in the loop of every single year would go to the sheriffs, which of course means more charges.

[kirstyo]

You can definitely have your discount added retrospectively, I did a few years ago. I had massive issues with the council continuing to lose paperwork or whatever so I never received my student discount, eventually I walked into their office with yet another copy of the proof of being a student for the whole year and they added the discount. It took a bit longer to come through because obviously it had to be dealt with by the council then passed on but I did get it.

[kirstyo]

Oh and if you want to pay £20 I would offer £15, in my experience they will try and up your offer slightly so if you offer £15 and they try to bring it up a bit you could always tell them you can stretch it to £20 at the absolute most.

[kirstyo]

I wouldn't be worried, as long as you stick to what you agree with them it should go no further. Please make sure you do stick to it though, I once missed two weeks payment and they arrested my wages!

[kirstyo]

Yes they can still do it, you can make it difficult for them but they will catch up with you eventually. They can arrest either your bank account or your wages which ever they can get their hands on basically. If you are paying by direct debit they already have your bank details and if you deliberately moved to avoid paying them the judge would absolutely give them the right to arrest your bank. Not that this is difficult for them any way, also once you have had action taken against you once, it is so much easier for them to do it again. That is how they managed to arrest my wages after just two weeks, I had a previous arrestment which I had paid in full and was paying them for a different year, because I had a previous arrestment they were able to pretty much automatically arrest my wages again, also you don't get a chance to stop an arrestment before it starts, you wont know that it is happening until it does. They already have a summary warrant, so the judge would let them arrest your wages or bank if you don't stick to payments.

[kirstyo]

You are right they would find out they have all sorts of ways including the electoral register and I would assume credit reference agencies. Best to stick to payments and then you have no worries

[kirstyo]

in theory yes you can reduce your payments, but you need to get them to agree. I called them when I moved and explained I had a change of circumstances because of just moving my partner was not working and we only had my bursary as income at the moment, they agreed to a reduced payment but they did review it after a while, I think it was six months and I did put it up slightly but not back to what it was. So I guess if you called them with something similar, some sort of change in your financial circumstances they might agree to reduce your amount, especially because like you say you would owe them less at that point.

[kirstyo]

If they don't know what you are earning they don't know how much they could get via an arrestment. I would make your offer before it gets to the stage of them looking to recover via arrestment. If they accept your offer and you stick to it you are fine, they almost always accept a reasonable offer and as long as you stick to it they wont look for your employment details. They currently have no idea what my income is, because I have stuck to my agreement. They know I am no longer working at my old job, because that is how my arrestment ended, but when I left I called them about it and offered them a certain amount which they accepted and they therefore had no need to obtain my work details.

[kirstyo]

That's great! Glad you got it sorted out. Although I can assure you they would not have passed it on to another collection agency, maybe another department but it would still be the sheriff officers, they would arrest your earnings or bank account eventually.

 

 

I have to admit although I had my issues with the council which prevented me from dealing with the sheriffs officers the way I should, once I started dealing with them I actually found them quite easy to deal with as well. Not a pleasant experience but certainly the best debt collector experience I have had.