to think this is totally unfair and I shouldn't have to pay?

[ABrotherWhoLooksLikeHellMugYou]

Received a notice of non-payment of council tax earlier this week. Checked my bank account and the DD had been taken as planned, so assumed the letter was just sent out precipitously and (as I couldn't get the fucking website to load, nor could I get through to anyone on the phone) mentally put the matter aside.

Today DP and I have received a fucking COURT SUMMONS for non payment of council tax. I checked my bank account again, yes, it's definitely gone out. I checked my online council tax account - it is actually working today - yup, the last payment went out early this week, and the month prior to that and so on - we're all up to date, only now they've added on the fucking admin fee for the court summons.

I am fucking RAGING. The sheer stress of receiving a court summons, especially when it's unfair and unnecessary. Of course the council is bloody closed now, so all I can do is send them a very chilly message and rant on here about it and wait until Monday to ring them, if I can actually get through.

Anyway, my AIBU - AIBU to think I shouldn't have to pay the admin fee for them issuing a court summons considering I deliberately set up a DD in May so mistakes wouldn't be made and I wouldn't forget to pay?

Also, is there anything I can do to fight this, or are they just going to make me pay anyway? I could really do without this shit atm.

This happened to me OP. I was fuming and worried like you. Rang up and it was sorted in minutes. Lovely guy apologised and confirmed via e mail all was well. A payment made had been taken off this years, when I had owed them still from year before. That was on me. All was fine and it will be for you too, I'm sure 😊

You would only have to pay the court fees and costs if you hadn't paid the council tax. The paperwork should tell you how to respond to the summons.

If you deal with this by phone, for goodness sake follow everything up with an email or letter so that there is hard evidence.

If the council accepts this is wrong, ask them to put that in writing. Make sure you write to the court to tell them that is the case and send in your proof of payment to make absolutely sure there are no more cock-ups.

OP this happened to me too! The council ignored all my pleas to sort it out and it got to magistrates court. The magistrates were deeply, deeply unimpressed with them.

Spoken by someone who has no idea.

Council tax never becomes a ccj as it’s a tax not a credit product you choose to take advantage of. If it goes to court then it’s a liability order that is issued which then allows the council to either instruct bailiffs to collect or to go for an attachment of earnings

A CTax summons is for the Magistrate's court, not the County Court so no CCJ.

For all those saying Councils try to swerve the recovery process; they can't. It's all governed by legislation, and the statutory intervals between reminders, final notices, a Summons, and obtaining a Liability Order are very clearly set out.

Either a payment has been missed for this year, or last year. A close perusal of the various letters before the summons will show which it is.

The Council are doing their job. Everyone's bills go up if people aren't paying on time, as the Council then has to borrow to ensure they can still fund the services they provide.

Love the way people on here are making out it is the OPS fault she got a court summons!

Well it might be

If you have definitely paid it they wont charge you the fee.

It's very unlikely that these letters relate to this year if all your payments are showing as up to date on the portal.

Go back previous years. My old flatmate got stung for an old council tax bill he hadn't fully paid and the letters came in a good while after the payments were actually due.

This happened to me. 3 months after notifying the CT dept that my dad had died and the house was had been handed back to the HA, I got a letter addressed to dad (I had all mail re-directed to me after his death), threatening him with court action for not paying any CT for those 3 months. They had all the paperwork to prove he had died but no-body had thought to update the system. Far from him owing 3 months, the CT was overpaid and they owed the estate those 3 months (plus another 2). Now I laugh about it but at the time I was tearing my hair out at the sheer incompetency of it all.

We can't know for sure whether it is or it isn't. I have in the past thought I was up to date. I got sent a reminder letter. When I checked carefully I realised I had missed the last payment from the previous year. Paid it all off and had no issues. It is possible the OP has done something similar. Or it might be that the council have messed up.

What date is your council tax payment due and what date did you pay by debit card?

The reason I ask this is, it takes 3/4 days for payment to be received and is it possible that the payment on debit card was made on the payment date?

Alternatively is your direct debit not aligned with your council tax reference number? Thats a possible cause - not your fault and maybe they can sort it on Monday

I can understand your upset, its not nice getting a court summons, hopefully it will be sorted quickly and easily

Love the way people on here are making out it is the OPS fault she got a court summons!

Seeing as the OP has said they forget to make payments so set a direct debit up and hasn't replied to comments about previous years council tax how are we to know the court summons isnt correct

Contact your local Councillor, ( but good luck with that at the weekend our seem to think it is a 9 to 5 job)

Local councillors are volunteers. They get a small allowance for their time (which may be considerable) and expenses. They are not paid as such, so you can hardly expect them to be available 24/7 including evenings and weekends.

No, I'm not a councillor! 😄

Don't worry about it. Do not pay. My LA changed the bank account without telling us and the payments were going elsewhere. Despite an account that is always in credit, the computer still sends threatening letters and court summons. We just sent urgent emails and waited for them to catch up with their workload. An LA that doesn't take phone calls and promises to reply to an email within 14 days !!!

On the phone at opening time today. Waited 20 minutes. Finally got hold of a person, the direct debit hadn't started immediately, so a month had been missed that wasn't obvious to me. The council chap removed the summons and associated costs because I think he realised it was a genuine error (combined user error and computer!) So big relief. Thank you all for the reassurance.

Is this Salford council by any chance? Exactly the same thing happened to a family member, notice of payment one week, court summons the next.
Good luck getting through on the phones. Everyone at all councils seem to wfh now; aka doing bugger all.

Nah, bit more south.

All sorted now, thankfully, but the stress...!!!

This is the kind of thing where I look at it, and whilst being hugely appreciative of automation in general, if someone who's been doing the job for years (like the person you spoke to on the phone), just looked before sending the court summons and wrote you the letter instead to explain what's going on, and what needs to be done (and why didn't it show on your statement), then an awful lot of hassle on both sides would have been saved.

So because the system thought a month had been missed it did one letter and then jumped to court summons? Man that's properly hardcore 😳