AIBU to not be able to make head nor tail of this letter re Council Tax

[Zulor]

Situation is: I'm unemployed since 22nd October.

I applied for Universal Credit. They told me I need to apply separately for Council Tax Support, which I duly did.

About a week ago, I got a letter stating I've been awarded council tax support.

Today I get THE most confusing letter ever.

The gist of it as follows:

1. You no longer qualify from 29 October to 1 April 2019. The reason is natural migration to Universal Credit.
2. Then it goes on about Universal Credit and some jumbled figures
3. You will need to pay a minimum of 24% of the charge (£4.34 a week)
4. Then there's a council tax bill which says I've to pay the following amounts:

28.12.2018 £110 28.01.2019 £111 28.02.2019 £111

Can anyone tell me what this is about?

My monthly direct debit was 83 quid odd when I was working.
How the hell are they working this out?

Furthermore, I was told by the call centre, to apply for ESA separately. When I went to the office, they told me I can't apply for that, everything falls under UC now.
It seems like they don't know their arse from their elbow.

Your council doesn't award full council tax benefit to those on Universal Credit, and if you've not paid anything towards it since the end of October you now need to make up those payments before the year end.

What did the letter about council tax support say? Check that this letter wasn't produced before your benefit award.

Are you eligible for ESA based on NI Contributions, or is your award entirely income based?

How the fuck am I supposed to afford £332 when I'll be on £72.50 a week?

I haven't received a Universal Credit award letter yet?

Don't bloody ask me. Everyone I talk to seems to have a different story, so I don't know what the hell I should be applying for.

You need to answer the questions. No point swearing at me.

This frustrates me so much with council tax. So you’ll earn £280 a month and they want £110 of it. They don’t care whether you eat or not. Council tax should not be a priority bill

My council tax goes out by direct debit, so if I haven't been charged, it's on them. The letter says I've been overpaid 312 (I haven't been paid anything), and it is recoverable as I should have known that I was being overpaid. But I haven't been paid anything yet!

I suggest you take all your letters to your local Citizens Advice and get them to help you sort it out.

If you made enough National Insurance contributions, you can apply for "new-style" JSA or ESA (this is the same as the old contributory JSA/ESA).

Do you rent or have a mortgage? If renting you should still apply for Universal Credit even if you're also eligible for new-style JSA/ESA.

Lastly the council tax bill does sound wrong but none of us can explain it, you'll have to call the council and ask how it was worked out. It might have been sent out in error, that happens sometimes. But give them a call.

Sorry, I wasn't swearing at you, I'm swearing in general

I'd call someone (it might be a bit late now today; my council office is only open for a few hours on the odd Saturday morning but check just incase).

It's not uncommon for the switch to UC to generate a whole load of confusing letters; whilst they sort all the systems out.

I had this when I was unwell and lost my job. I wasn’t eligible for full relief, and received £64 a week. This was somehow supposed to pay for my mortgage of £420 & £99 pcm for council tax. I turned up to an ‘investigation meeting’ and showed them all this. Eventually they said I could pay a ‘token sum’ to my council tax and repay once I started working again. It was a nightmare.
In the end, a family member helped me out, so I can’t offer a solution for you, but I do sympathise. There’s no proper support for folks who have a short period of no income, and there’s such confusing ‘guidance’ given. Arse and elbow come to mind.
Hopefully someone else will be along soon with better advice, but I really feel for you.

You can't phone them. They give a website link to an appeal form. But since I can't make head nor tail of the letter, I'm not sure what I'm appealing!

Are citizen's advice actually knowledgeable on this stuff though? Even the people working on the UC helpline don't seem to know what they're talking about?

So answer the questions and go from there. It's quite possible your overpayment is not that high, but the letters have crossed so the CTS has not been applied.

You must be able to phone them, just go on your local council's website and find the 'contact us' page.

What are your circumstances btw, do you live alone?

Holla
Sounds like you were getting a contributory benefit (JSA presumably). If you were single at the time you could have also applied for income-based JSA and council tax reduction. But if you were living with a partner in paid work you wouldn't have been entitled to means-tested benefits.

CAB will have a benefits advisor that will have the knowledge you need, but it could take some time to get an appt.

DWP call centre staff are not trained to give advice, simply to input data onto the system.

You're not calling to appeal; you're calling to clarify. They might not want to encourage that but I'd still do it; you've got a much lower change of winning an appeal if you don't know what you're appealing!

It sounds like your Council Tax Support has been cancelled. Did you complete a change in circumstance form when you applied for UC? You might need to ask for a reconsideration or do a new claim then provide your UCAS Award letter when you receive it. You need to speak to them to see what you need to do.

When they say you have been overpaid, I think they acryally mean they had paid a credit to your council tax bill. So you didnt actually get any money, but your bill was reduced. Now they have changed their mind, so they can claim that money back. This means that you have to pay the whole bill over a shorter time, which is why monthly payments have gone up.

They basically can make mistakes and claim the money back whenever they want, citing that you should have known they made a mistake. Which often you didnt know because you didnt understand their award in the first place and are not trained to do their job. Can you tell this has happened to me too?

Sorry OP. I do recommend taking all your paperwork to the CAB and asking if they can make sense of it.

The Council tax letter awarding it to me, said I was being awarded support - can't remember how much, but maybe 80% of the bill.

The only thing I can think, is that they are awarding Council Tax support within the Universal Credit award?

I dunno. It's a bloody nightmare.

"Are citizen's advice actually knowledgeable on this stuff though? Even the people working on the UC helpline don't seem to know what they're talking about?"

You do realise the people on the UC helpline are nothing to do with Citizens Advice, right? You realise that the UC helpline is inadequately funded by DWP and the people have inadequate training? It's not in their interest to help people apply for the benefits they're entitled to.

Citizens Advice exists to help people and one of the key things they help people with is benefits. They should all be informed and trained on UC. Our local council is directing people to Citizens Advice for UC advice.

What are the dates on the two letters? It's not unusual to receive them in the wrong order.

Speak to who though? There's no number to call!