Historic Council Tax Issue

CIS wrote: »

It's a judgement call from the council.

Craig

So in effect, yes names from a hat.
If by judgement call they look at payment history and see that one person has paid all their bills since they may think that this person is the softer target. Rather than the person with the spotty payment history. I'm guessing maybe all payment histories since have been good.

CIS wrote: »

The consideration generally goes much further than that - it depends what information the council have available.

You'd be surprised though with regards to payments - a lot of councils will try and pursue those who didn't make payment if they can in the first instance (most councils won't know who made which payments though). Regardless of people may think a lot of them will try and be fair with the recovery initially and give other options a try. That's not to say all councils are the same though (I saw a lot of different ways of working over the years).

I would hope that the consideration goes further than that but sadly thus far there is no evidence to show that. Also it seems a mystery as to how they come to a judgement as to who they should chase for the money if they have more than one name and address. You say more thought goes into it but certainly here no one knows what that thought is.
The fact that they may not provide that information for nearly three weeks while looking for my friends details in 2 really means there is very little chance to appeal if there is an error on the councils side.
Agree the council prob won't know who made the payment and that's fair enough. How it took 10/11 years to make contact is still a mystery and means it's much harder to resolve for the person they make contact with.
Appreciate your comments btw.

CIS wrote: »

No-one other than the actual council officer involved knows the exact judgement but having done that job for a decade I have a pretty good insight in to it. There is no formal appeal which can be undertaken to dispute the action other than the Valuation Tribunal if a person believes they are being held wrongly liable (not where they simply think the council should pursue another joint party).

With respect to the delay- legally there's no issue but there may be room for an LGO complaint over the delay itself (not over which action is being taken or against who).

Appreciate only the council officer in question can know exactly what has happened in terms of trying to contact others but so far I haven't seen any suggestion as to what the standard procedure is to pursue one person and not another if they had the details of two people. No one has said what exactly they will look at. I would have thought there would be some procedures for it? If they did send letter to two people how would my friend then know how much she will have to pay? Maybe no formal appeal process but if for example proof could be given that a payment was made that the council did not recognise on their statement of account then surely there must be a way of highlighting this?

CIS wrote: »

There is no required procedure, each council would have their own specific procedure which may or may allow for extra provisions in addition to the statutory requirement.


Only as far the council is willing to take that in to account - legally a joint tenant is responsible for every penny outstanding regardless of whether they've paid some or not. The law takes no regard of who has paid what, only that sum is outstanding and each person is responsible for everything up to and including the full amount.

Ok, but as far as my friend is concerned she is still clueless as to what, if anything they have done. It may well have been names from a hat if they had addresses for more than one person. I have seen no example of the sort of things they may take into account when deciding who to pursue.
Appreciate law takes no regard of who pays what, poorly written law I would think. Laws are generally there to ensure fairness, to protect those who need protecting (different discussion I know). But the council does have the ability to use common sense and say we have addressed this liability to 4 unrelated people and therefore we don't sting one person for everything if we have contacted 3. A reasonable amount from the one person (say one third of the bill) is satisfactory result. Trying to get onto the Greenwich Council website to read their mission statement but sadly there seems to be some issues there.