Student being made to pay council tax- advice please!

[Deleted User]

Hiya, I am a student adviser (8 years and counting!), and I've dealt with this a lot.

Basically your argument needs to be made to the Council, since they are the ones you 'owe' the tax to. Send off the sample letter and ask them to reassess the exemption.

It is the Council who make a decision on the exemption. They may require a letter from the uni to confirm the status i.e. "Student is part time repeating in order to come back on a full-time basis next year". It is probably best to get this and include it with your letter initially, rather than waiting for them to ask. You could also include the Student Loan Award letter for this year, as the fact of receiving the loan also confirms the status.

I ended up using the argument with our university so that they would provide exemption certificates in these cases. However, you don't necessarily need the uni to provide this certificate, it's just an administrative short-cut.

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As long as the intention is to return to the course full-time he is a full-time student on a part-time basis (used to be called part-time repeaters), doesn't matter how many modules/how much in fees. It seems like it shouldn't make sense, but it is right. If he were truly part-time he would get no student loan, and would only be eligible for a couple of hundred pounds a year as a grant, he would also be able to get Council Tax Benefit (amongst others).

If you want to help other students in the same situation, it might be a good idea to go to the Students' Union about it, the Advice Centre if they have one. If you do decide to do this and the Union want to talk to me about it PM me and I'll let you know how they can get in touch with me.

Hope this helps, it is really complicated but I promise I'm right!

[Deleted User]

If you're at Portsmouth Uni, looks like this is the person to contact. http://www.upsu.net/contacts/task,view/contact_id,9/Itemid,383/

I can't see any Advice Centre, which might be why this is still an issue.

katy1987

hey all. just thought i'd bump my old thread as the problem is not resolved- just rapidly getting worse!

it's now at the stage where we've spoken to the council, the uni (both adamant mike's part time. uni have been incredibly unhelpful and even rude when we have tried to put our case to them)...

mike has applied for: council tax benefit (they said no because MY income is too high and we are a couple- hmm, fair enough but frustrating);

jobseekers, and income support (on the grounds that everyone else seems to be calling him a part-time student- but this lot have said he counts as full-time!)

he did sort it with the council tax office so they'd freeze the account whilst he appealed the situation... but they must have 'unfrozen' it as he's had a court summons for this friday. arrgh.

we're so confused by all the conflicting responses and uni are unbelievably unsupportive. shivster, if you're reading, you were a great help before- any advice for us now? or anyone?

oh, and we've got coursework and exams coming out of our ears!

xx

MrsManda

In order to get the benefit he really needs to get someone at the university on side as that's how the council decides who gets the benefits. I know you've been trying so I apologise if I'm telling you what you already know but I was unsure from reading your previous posts.

Has he had an appointment with the Student Finance Centre at the university? CLICK
If he logs into the Student Portal, does it say what his status as a student is? Under financial information on my uni portal there are my registration/financial details and this has a box labelled Student Status.

katy1987

thanks mrsmanda, yeah i'd love to get the uni on side! i'm just not sure who to go to!

our options seem to be:

a grumpy lady in academic registry who we used to approach regularly for advice/proof of student status, and she initially told us stories about students who had 'tried this sort of thing before' and paid the council tax under threat of being taken to court, and if we persisted, she'd just plain ignore us! literally, calling 'NEXT!' with us standing there trying to show her information!

a friendly student sabbatical officer who didn't know anything about the situation but was given all the info and promised to get back to us- and never has. we've been back to see her twice with promises of 'i'll get back to you'. ...helpful...

and the student finance office, who sent us to academic registry. doh.

i don't mean to sound so cynical and grumpy but it's so frustrating to feel like the uni don't care! i mean, i understand there are students with worse problems who are perhaps prioritised, but this is a big problem for us. we don't exactly have endless cash.

aaaargh. panic. xx

edit: just checked portal, it doesn't say anything about full-time or part-time status, and mine doesn't either. doh!

katy1987

thanks mrsmanda, yeah i'd love to get the uni on side! i'm just not sure who to go to!

our options seem to be:

a grumpy lady in academic registry who we used to approach regularly for advice/proof of student status, and she initially told us stories about students who had 'tried this sort of thing before' and paid the council tax under threat of being taken to court, and if we persisted, she'd just plain ignore us! literally, calling 'NEXT!' with us standing there trying to show her information!

a friendly student sabbatical officer who didn't know anything about the situation but was given all the info and promised to get back to us- and never has. we've been back to see her twice with promises of 'i'll get back to you'. ...helpful...

and the student finance office, who sent us to academic registry. doh.

i don't mean to sound so cynical and grumpy but it's so frustrating to feel like the uni don't care! i mean, i understand there are students with worse problems who are perhaps prioritised, but this is a big problem for us. we don't exactly have endless cash.

aaaargh. panic. xx

CIS

I work in council tax so may be able to help but first a few queries;

Has the university confirmed that he has officially moved from a full time to part time attendance.

How many hours is he currently expected to attend/study for per week ?.

katy1987

hi CIS!

according to city council tax office, the university have confirmed that mike's course fails to meet the required criteria. and we have a stamped letter from the uni saying he is studying a full time course on a part time basis.

he actually only has 3 hours of lectures/seminars a week :S but is expected to study a little more than that in his own time. nowehere near the 16 hour minimum or however much it was though.

would you be able to offer any insight into the court process? neither of us have ever really been in 'trouble' before! don't know what it will be like, but presuming we need to take all mike's info and try to explain why he has so far refused to pay.

thanks xx

CIS

The court summons will request that you attend but there is no requirement to, the Liability Orders will be granted for every application the council makes unless a valid dispute is put in front of the magistrate.

Unfortunately the dispute you have is not a one for which the magistrate can refuse to grant the liability order as you have been billed in line with statue ( a dispute over a discount/exemption is dealt with by a Valuation Tribunal (VT) and any case that falls in the remit of the VT is outside that of the magistrate to rule on ).

So , effectively the Uni are now saying his course is part time, have they stated what will happen after this year ?.
Is the course available usually as part time and have they swapped him on to that curriculum and changed his timetables ?

katy1987

i am sorry CIS but i think i need the court info in dumbed-down english please! do we need to go to a valuation tribunal to sort the problem then? should we do that before or after court date? and is there any point in going to court?

sorry for all the questions!

he is repeating 2 units from his second year (one per semester). because they amount to 30 credits, he was not allowed to trail them, which he gladly would have done! after he has completed these units this year, he will do his (full-time) third year.

the uni, by the way, have flat-out refused to issue an exemption certificate. mind you, this is the job of aforementioned grumpy lady and i get the feeling she assumes he is a 'lazy layabout student' who has failed units and deserves to pay tax. she said to him, "well, that's just one of the consequences of failing your course." how rude!

i gathered from what shivster said that he should still be exempt from council tax as he intends to return to full-time after summer. also, he is on a full-time course- but only re-doing a small bit of it at the moment!

sorry for various ramblings and questions. xx