Council Tax Issues.

[VictorianSqualor]

DP received a summons yesterday for our council tax.

We were in receipt of council tax benefit at the beginning of the year but have been reassessed due to employment changes/new baby and two different tax credit awards so had no bloody idea what benefit we were going to receive.

Finally find out that we are now entitled to nothing about a week ago, so a bill that at last count was £600 is now £1500.
Anyway, the summons has been sent because the last two months we didn't pay CT whilst awaiting the awards and we have been called to court on June 19th.

DP cannot possibly get a CCJ as he is literally weeks away from being given a formal offer of appointment for the police force, a CCJ could hinder this.

On the letter we have it says the full amount needs to be paid and we have lost the right to pay monthly. DP is going to call tomorrow and explain the situation to the housing officer in charge and see if they will accept a monthly payment, surely this is all the court would tell them anyway? We can't afford to pay the full amount and the court will see that so can only, I assume, tell us to pay monthly, which is what we are offering so is it still likely to go to court or is it possible they would accept our offer?

Has anyone got experience of this situation? If DP explains to the officer why he really can't afford to have a CCJ would they be more likely to be lenient?

Not sure he'd get a CCJ anyway, VS. Summonses for arrears of CT are usually dealt with within the magistrates' courts.

Is there no way you could get a loan, either from a bank or family to pay off all the arrears? That has to be better than scuppering dp's chances of a career in the police.

Are CCJ's not related to CT then?
It said something on the DWP website about CCJ's for CT.
It is magistrates court that we have been called to actually, so what would they do?

The council will be applying for a liability order, which then gives them the power to recover the arrears in a number of ways, either through attachment of earnings, bailiffs, etc.

DP should attend court and explain the situation, making an offer to clear the arrears (councils usually like to see the arrears cleared within a year, so see if you can come up with an offer of instalments which would do this). The council will probably still be granted the liability order, but, if you stick with the payments, it is highly likely they will never seek to enforce it.

Does it have any affect on your credit score?

If you make an effort to pay some in the meantime and come up with a proposal for the balance then a CCJ is unlikely.

They always say you have lost the right to pay monthly, but trust me, they will accept monthly installments,they just want paying at the end of the day.

That's my thoughts on it too mybrainaches.
Fingers crossed.

this is from my non-payment-of-poll-tax-protest experience, admittedly a few centuries have passed since then.

they are likely to accept an offer of instalments rather than go to court, which costs them in the end.

even if you do go to court it isn't a ccj unless you default on the judgement.

i didn't pay it, admitted to it in court and still got to pay by instalments to bailiff. of course it may be very different now and they might execute him on the spot or something, but i doubt it.

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Thanks Cod, and everyone else.

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Well, DP had to get me to translate as he couldn't read a word you typed, I hadn't realised you got used to reading 'codspeak' but obviously I have

It's eased his mind anyway, I wasn't too worried but he's a fretter, we've got all paperwork relating to it out of the files and jotted down payments made, benefit assessments etc so we can show what went on and hopefully get it sorted, I'm hoping offering to pay the amount outstanding by the next tax year will help as it just means we'd be paying the two months arrears on top of the normal payment.

It's a fecking joke though going to court over two months payments.

OK. It will be magistrates court as they don't get ccjs for CTax. This does not affect your credit rating, but gives the authority the ability to deduct directly from earnings/benefits or send round bailiffs or ask for you to be committed to prison if you continue to withhold payment. The costs of the summons and the liability order will be added to your bill. If you are both named on the bill then you will both have been sent reminders and summonses,(joint and several liability).

I am surprised that this has come as a shock to you, as the local authority are bound by law to send you reminders before it gets to the summons stage. They have to issue you a bill each time there is a change in your liability, and only when you have failed to pay that bill (i.e by meeting an instalment) do they send reminders. As you have missed two months payments (and from the sound of it not explained what you were doing to the billing authority) they have reminded and then summonsed you.

Your alternatives are as follows:
pay in full
come to an arrangement to clear the arrears and stick to it
offer a lump sum and then arrears on an arrangement

There is no reason for the authority not to apply for and obtain the liability order. If you make an arrangement and stick to it, then no further action should be taken, the l.o. is there just in case you default again. You need to talk to the CTax officers - they are not psychic, and will not know what is going on unless you tell them. CTB is administered by the HB office, not the CTax office, and they will have no idea of why you missed two months payments. It will either come under wilful refusal or culpable neglect as the legislation has it.

It is not a joke going to court over two months payments. How do they know you are ever going to pay up? Everyone else's CTax goes up each year to make up the shortfall of people who don't pay, or who are paying on an arrangement. The local authority have a statutory duty to collect the CTax; they're just doing their job.

scaryteacher, we had no reminder, the last bill we had was the one with the benefit adjustment on it, then the summons with no adjustment.

I wasn't aware that the people who deal with CTB are different to those who deal with CT as on the last bill, the council tax was taken as a reduction, rather than us being paid to pay them like Housing benefit iyswim.

Yes, we probably, in hindsight, should have called and explained we were waiting for the reassessment, but we didn't which led us here, that I understand, but two months isn't exactly many payments and we were not contacted since the last bill which I think is a joke. Unless of course we were contacted which we never received, we have already had a number of items that Royal Mail 'lost' on their way to the benefits office returned after three months of being 'missing' and a number of items delivered to the wrong address as we live next to a farm, whose address is the same as oursbut that's a whole another story about my personal opinion that the post should not be relied on in such important situations.

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What is common? People having the same address?

It's sorted.
If anyone else gets in this situation just call them straight away.

It's only necessary to prove that the reminder was sent, not that you got it.

Reminder runs are automatic, and it's like a gas bill, if you don't pay, you get reminded and then taken to court, just as you would for any other bill.

Like I said "that's a whole another story about my personal opinion that the post should not be relied on in such important situations."

They were fine anyway, and perfectly understanding, apparently the summons was sent without the court date even being finalised. We had seven days to contact them before it was finalised so we don't even have to go to court, we just paid the arrears and have gone back to normal monthly instalments.

Ah scaryteacher has beat me to it, this is what happens when I go away for a weekend

I have to say VictorianSqualor that I am AMAZED that they are not taking it to court. Like scaryteacher I too worked in Ctax and we also had a separate CTB department.

Our council had court dates booked every month and we would never have withdrawn a summons. We would have made a payment arrangement subject to all the details that the liability order would have given us such as employment details and a full financial breakdown of your income and expenditure.

For anyone else in this situation if you fail an arrangement after the LO has been issued by the court and they deduct money directly from your earnings the percentage is set by government and considered to be high.

At the end of the day it is a goverment tax, it is just collected locally.

I was a totally nice and understanding person on the end of the phone and would not judge anyone or belittle anyone. At the end of the day the job is to bill the correct people and collect the money in.

They wouldn't have withdrawn the summons if we hadn't contacted them so quickly, we got the letter saturday and called them yesterday, paid the arrears and set up a direct debit for the rest of the payments, which is just what our monthly payments would have been anyway.

If we hadn't made a satisfactory offer or paid anything yesterday, or called within seven days it would have gone to court unless we paid the full amount.

They may not have to prove a reminder was sent, which I believe it was, just that we didn't receive it, but they took that into consideration and gave us the benefit of the doubt and treated the case as if we'd just received the reminder. We have always paid on time before this incident as well though, so I expect our payment history went well for us.