Newlyn control of goods letter re CTAX

[E Munch]

People are confusing two things here.

1. There is the ablilty or otherwise to charge the fees for entering the different stages of the Schedule 12 process and

2. the ability or otherwise to take control of goods if the Notice of Enforcment has not been sent to where you usually live.

 

The two fees involved so far are as below. You can see from the description of the stages in regulation 5 of the Taking Control of Goods (Fees) Regulations 2014 that the stage has a specific start point and from regulation 4(3) that the whole stage fee is due before all the parts of the stage have taken place.:-

The £75 Compliance stage fee and that is due as soon as the instruction is received by the enforcment agent. Although the sending of the NoE will normally be part of the compliance stage it is not required to be sent to justify the fee being due.

The £235 enforcement stage fee (plus any percentage for larger debts) which is due as soon as the enforcement stage commences which is said to be "from the first attendance at the premises in relation to the instructions..." It does not say the visit has to be for the purpose of taking control of goods.

From this you can see the £310 can be due even if a Notice of Enforcement (NoE) has not been sent to where you usually live.

 

From the way the OP describes it, the enforcement agent in this case does seem to have only sent one NoE and that went to an old address so it was not where the debtor usually lived at the time of it was sent. Becuase of this they cannot legally take control of goods.

 

If you are proposing to pay the debt you would be best to point out that they cannot TCoG unless they resend a NoE to where you usually live and allow 7 clear days after it is sent before TCoG. As I said, however, it does not seem legally to invalidate the enforcement stage fee. I would try to appeal to the council to tell the enforcemnt agent to waive the enforcement stage fee as a gesture of good will (you never know!) and accept payment of the council tax debt plus the £75 compliance stage fee. That might be easy if you are going to pay in full immediately but I assume you will be trying to offer a payment arrangement. If you do that they would have time to send a new NoE and make another visit when a new enforcement stage fee would be due even if they'd waived the first one.