Reclaiming Court Summons Cost

Phillykins

Hi all,

I wonder if anyone knows if I have a right to claim back a court summons cost from the council?

The situation is that I am a stduent and live with three other students. We are all on a work placement and moved into the property at the very start of July. Soon we got a council tax payment notice. To buy us some time to get our student certificates together and sent off, I paid an instalment of £188.46 We all sent off student certificates around the September time but the council refused to accept them claiming we were too far from our respective universities.

We went back to our uni's and got them to write a second letter explaining we were on placement and are full time students. I admit we did take out time on this, and it was early Novemeber when these were sent off. The council STILL refused to accept this as good proof, and insisted our uni's send them the hours we work on placement on university headed paper with the university stamp.

Finally we had out uni's fax through this information and they have granted us an excemption.

However, during this time we received a court summons for 10th December which has now been cancelled obviously. In the post today we received a break down and discovered they are passing the £69.30 "Authority Summons Cost" and the £3 "Court Summons Cose" onto us. So out of £188.46 we are only due £116.16, according to them.

Do I have the right to claim back the cost of the court summons considering the fact we now have an excemption and we haven't been to court?

Thanks!

Airwolf1

You moved in the property at the start of July, knowing there was Council Tax to sort out, and it was November when the 2nd letter from Uni went off to the council? The council have started recovery action, as they would with anyone. They would have the discretion to write off the costs, but with the time that has elapsed, I doubt very much they will.

Mikeyorks

Phillykins wrote: »

Do I have the right to claim back the cost of the court summons considering the fact we now have an excemption and we haven't been to court?

Thanks!

You don't have the 'right' and the fact you haven't been to court adds no credence to your claim.

But ... I do think you have a good case to ask them to write off the costs.

You submitted the exemption certificates (reasonably) timeously. And it is the Councils rebuttal of these .. despite they have now accepted the validity of the claims .... that has led to the Costs being imposed. The fact they asked for additional information doesn't disguise the fact that the initial claims were (I assume the certificates were from the Uni?) perfectly valid. And I would concentrate on that aspect if you decide to pursue.