Summons for non payment of council tax. But it has been paid!!

[morgymoo182]

Ok basically I have just received a summons from the council because they claim that the Council Tax has not been paid. However looking at my boyfriends bank statements I can see that three payments have been made of £130, £112 and £106 over the past three months.
I've just rung the Council Tax people to explain and they have said that they have no record of these payments under this reference number. They're demanding £550!
I'm so scared because we really cannot afford to pay that much money, especially when it has already been paid. I'm a student and my boyfriend is about to be laid off.

I guess I'm just looking for some reassurance, and to see if this has happened before to anyone? Help!

bump

take your bank statements down to the council. they need to be original copies though

Get onto your bank to trace where the payments are going immediately.

what shesells said.

go in person to the council offices with the original statements.

this happened to one of the academics i worked for. turns out the council was assigning her payments to the wrong customer number!

OK thank you very much everyone!

CarGirl - on the statement it says Manchester C C.

is his reference number on the statement?

also, is that his entire payment for the month?

and make sure, too, he's not paying them for something else, like council tax arrears or fines.

morgymoo182 we had problems with Manchester CC earlier this year - they sent us a court summons for unpaid Council Tax, for a flat we weren't even living in! We had notified them when we moved away from that address in 2006, but they didn't have a record of it. We posted them proof of the date we moved into our current house, and they cancelled the summons and confirmed we didn't owe them any money.

Hopefully if you show them the bank statements you will be able to get it written off. Don't panic, and good luck

There would be no arrears or anything like that because this is the first time we've paid anything like this - he was living with his parents beforehand.

There was a reference number on the statement but the guy on the phone said it wasn't recognisable.

So does this mean that if they can't find where our money has gone, that we're going to have to pay it again?

Do the payments that your boyfriend made match up with the monthly amounts on your annual statement? If so, this would go some way to proving that you thought you were paying it...

no if you can prove that you have paid, which you can, its upto the council to find where the money has gone. they cannot make you pay again. or take it to court. get thee to the council with statements and stop worrying yourself.

i have done courts where poeple have these problems

they are lookign for two htigns

1. wilingness ot pay

1. any potential errors

ourside hte court they always haev a council perosn ready to do a deal

keep all your paper work and keep your cool
all will be fine

Well we've paid £350 so far, and according to our bill, we should only have paid £210.
This shouldn't even be happening, it is the councils error. They set up the direct debit.

This happened to us years ago - had been paying it, could prove that we'd paid it, then got final notice that it hadn't been paid. Went into the council offices and after lots of being shunted around eventually got someone and showed them the evidence from the bank that they'd been paid. They agreed it and said that we didn't need to worry (note - if this happens to you make sure you get the persons name and get it in writing!). Next thing we knew was a summons and the threat of bailiffs! Went to the council again, they agreed it again and wanted to just write "cancelled" on it and take the summons notice away! Turned out they'd put the wrong reference number on the direct debit so we'd not only paid, we'd OVERpaid. And they'd given someone else a refund because theirs had been double paid, without checking where the payments had come from!

There's a few magic words/phrases which will soon have councils scuttling for cover if they're giving you grief and it's a mistake of theirs. The first one is "maladministration" and the other is "local government ombudsman".

You should have had a schedule of payments stating when the DD payments would be taken and the amounts for each one sent when the DD was set up.

You need to check that the ref number showing on the bank statement matches the number on th schedule of payments they sent to you when they set up the DD. If they match fine; if not, you have a problem.

I don't think it is legal under the LGFA 1992 to send you a summons before having sent you a reminder for non payment, so see if you have had a reminder. Problem is that the Council doesn't have to prove that they were received, just that they were sent.

Go to the Council, show the bank statements and the DD coming out, and ask them to stop the Summons; delete the costs from your account; and trace the money (which hopefully have been taken as per the DD schedule of payments) as they have cocked up. Get the person you see to give you their name and extension number so that you can chase them if necessary.

Last thought - if you are a f/t student, have you applied for a 25% discount? If not, do so asap, as this will reduce the bill further. If your dp is about to be made redundant, ensure that you apply for Council Tax benefit as well, as that will reduce the bill even more.

Hope that helps - but don't leave it until the court date as not only will you get the costs of the summons, you'll get the Liability Order costs as well, as it's a hassle taking them off an account. Best to get it sorted beforehand.

The Scaryteacher formerly the Scary Council Tax Officer!

omg listen to YOU! fantastic!!!

Thanks LunarSea, that sounds exactly like what is happening here.
Boyfriend is at work at the moment but when he gets home he is going to look for the original council tax bill etc. hopefully to find the right reference number. If he can find it then that should sort out the issue quite quickly and easily, but if not then I will be down the council offices straightaway.

Thanks everyone!

Thanks Scary Council Tax Officer! That's a great help too. Mumsnet great place when havin a huge panic!

I'm an ex scary Council Tax Officer - I found children easier to terrify, and less likely to threaten to burn my house down, as some people did when I worked on Community Charge!!

Hope it helps. If you've paid by DD and can prove it, the onus is on the Council to trace the payments, not you.

Thanks everyone. Thankfully it's all been sorted out. When OH sent the statements upto me, the bank had also put all the information about the direct debit in there. I noticed another account reference of a similar format to ours. I rang them up, explained, gave them both reference numbers and they managed to sort it out!
So now the summons has been cancelled and the future payments have been reduced because we'd been overpaying before!
Thanks everyone I don't think this would have been sorted out as quickly or as easily without you guys! x