AIBU to think that the council have to be joking here?

[WeAreEternal]

I have a friend who suffers from severe dyslexia, I help her out with letters and bills and things as she really struggles with reading.

She suffers from a condition that means she can't work at the moment, she is also a single parent and is in recept of benefits.

When they made the change to council tax she was told that she had to start paying £16 per month.
She really struggled to find this extra money, she was already on a tight budget, and was advised to contact the council and explain that she was struggling and they would help her.
While she was waiting for a call back to discuss it she missed a payment and as a result was sent a formal demand, she called again and was told it would be fine, just wait for the call and it would all be sorted out.
She didn't receive a call but was sent another letter telling her that as she had missed her payment she now owed the full amount and if she didn't pay it within 7 days she would be taken to court.

She called them again and was told that that she had to set up a payment plan, and was told the minimum she could pay is £5 per week, she agreed as she doesn't want to go to court, she was told if that happens they will do an attachment of earnings onto her benefits and it will be for a much larger amount.

She is now panicking because she is now in a worse situation then before.

I can't understand how the council think a woman who was unable to find £16 per month is going to be able to pay £20 per month.
They said they would help her but they have just made the situation worse for her.

I'm really angry on her behalf.

We are going to write to them explaining that there is no way she can pay £5 per week as she doesn't have it, but that she is willing to pay £10 per month as she can just about afford that.

Does that sound reasonable?

The council usually do income assessment sheets. Has she done one of those? If they've judged that she has the income to pay £16 per month, she may struggle to get them to accept less. Usually, you can sit with them and go through debt payments etc, or whatever you need to pay that means you can't afford the payment, and they'll accept that for three months. Then you have to do it again.

She really needs to be careful owing the council, though. Council tax is a priority debt, and she should pay it before everything. The CAB even advice paying council tax before rent.

If she's accepted a £20 a month payment plan, she needs to make at least one payment of that, while you try to negotiate it down. If she fails to pay it again, it'll be a second failed payment plan, and it's usually passed to the courts then.

If your friend really struggles with this, she'll need to find someone who can do it on her behalf, legally. An advocacy worker or a charity or a friend who she has given companies permission to deal with. That way, the situation won't get any worse.

It's really, really crap, but they've really tightened up on payment plans as there are so many of them, and council tax really is a major payment.

I hope you can get this sorted quickly.

Thank you for that advice.

Her problem is that she pays a massive amount of 'top up' rent in top of her housing benefit, she lives in an area where there is very limited rented houses and very few that will accept benefits, so the landlords that do really take advantage. Her rent has been increased several times and she really struggles to afford it, but as there is no other rental properties she has no choice but to stay, she has been looking for a new house for three years now with no luck.

She also has a debt with British has as she the direct debit that she paid was apparently too low, but they failed to notice for a long time, so she is paying back that debt too.

The council know all of this but they don't seem to care.

Everything she has arranged and discussed with them has been over the phone, she said she explained to the woman on the phone that she is on a tight budget and can't afford much, but was told that £5 pw is the minimum that the will accept.

It seems to vary from council to council and at the very least this should be elevated to a complaint. Get everything in writing and keep it that way....start a paper trail because basically this has been managed very badly.

I pay £20 a month and they did no income/expenditure form....just got a letter saying £20 a month. I always paid council tax by DD when in work so it was no biggie for me to set this up. It IS an issue though if £20 a month is going to see someone struggling and I think she has been fobbed off. Make a complaint.

God love her, is she tied to that area for a reason? Is moving anywhere cheaper an option? Or is all her support local to her?

Did she not hold back any of the money from the missed payment? Tbh she should have paid as much as she could, not nothing.

I don't get it. Is she trying to negotiate cheaper council tax? It's not negotiable is it? It's a set amount based on the type of property you live in.

No, I think the OP is trying to explain that this is a vulnerable person already struggling and that councils DO have some leeway here. The issue is that the council in question have fobbed this woman off again and again but saying "wait for a letter" and then going in big guns. A case of people not talking to each other and a lack of respect or understanding with regard to vulnerable clients.

I'd rather pay £20 than £180 I think it's a reasonable amount .

They bring out the big guns on everyone I forgot to pay one month and I got letters threatening to take action.

www.facebook.com/groups/antibedroomtax/?fref=ts

try them

the council will try to enforce this charge

contact your local anti-cuts group too

Well bully for you, 50shades.
Is that on your budget or the budget of the lady mentioned in the OP?

You really need to be starting a paper trail now, and trying to make a back log of telephone calls and conversations.
It is too late to change what has already happened, and with hindsight she should have payed over the missed payment as soon as she was aware she had missed it.
is there any chance that you can more involved, attend with your friend dirct at the council offices and stop dealing over the telephone ?

The attachment to benefits I have seen for those on income support/ESA or similar have been less than £5 per week so don't believe it will necessarily be higher.

Get her to book an appointment with the CAB and take all the paperwork she has. Get her to pay what she can in the meantime (£1 a week if necessary).

Worst case scenario she gets taken to court (and they will have to do this if they want an attachment to benefits). If they do so then she will get approx £85 costs added.

Get her to check whether the instalments are spread to January or March. If January then ask them to spread it up to March (councils can now do this on request). This will reduce the instalments though she obviously will be paying them for longer.

Council tax is a priority debt - she needs to put this before british gas. That is why they will not take that debt into account.

She can't leave the area, she moved here 6 years ago because the nhs trust here offer a treatment for her condition, which she could not get elsewhere. (Anywhere else she would have to pay for it privately)
She has friends here and her ex lives nearby and he helps with the DCs, she has no other family or friends anywhere else and would struggle to cope alone, if she did move her condition would massively deteriorate without the medication she is on.

The housing situation in her town is pretty much the same all around the area, it's really hard to find rental properties that accept benefits around here.
And because of that the ones that do come up are really overpriced but are still snapped up quickly.

The council in our area (I assumed it was nationwide) can offer assistance to people struggling, we looked into it. I'm not sure if the increase the amount of financial help that you receive or just decrease the amount you have to pay, but the do offer help.

This is what my friend was advised to apply for, she called them and was told someone would look into her case and call her back, but the never did.

She didn't intentionally miss the payment, she was told to wait to be contacted about the assistance, so she was waiting.

I think it would be a good idea to contact her local MP and ask them to write to the council on her behalf. Obviously, Council Tax needs to be paid, but if they've promised her help and haven't given it to her, then an MP may be able to help with that.

in my experience the council are very very slow with sorting out council tax issues but very quick with the final demand notices and threats of court.

when i was a single person entitled to the single person discount they issued me a demand for the whole amount, i contacted them over and over again to find out what i was actually supposed to pay and they dragged their heels... while at the same time issueing red bills for the full amount and then court demands... in the end i calculated what i thought the amount was i owed and paid that so that at least they couldn't say i was refusing to pay.

in all that time, it turns out they were saving my correspondence on file, they just didn't have the resource to do anything about it. in future i'd keep informing them of my situation but try not to worry too much about the final demands. each time i got one i'd just send another letter saying that i'm still waiting for assistance as promised by x on y date.