council tax arrears - advice ??

weezerfly30

think i may be in a mess with council tax now, i moved in November and sent the new council tax form off, well it tok months and months to hear from them about what had to pay. anyway, the other half opens a letter that says we owe £500, council tax on new house and what was oweing on old house we moved from, which they wanted there and then!!!!:mad: , took them ages to tell us didnt it!!!

so he has set up to pay £100 a week up until end of the month, thing is it is making us broke paying this, we have paid one amount but i wont get paid till end of the month and have nothing now, just his wages which are paid weekly, although now i am thinking this is going to get us n a right mess!!!

do you know if we can change the amount being paid, or are we stuck to it ?? i could pay more at the end of the month in one go, just £100 a week is awfull!!!!

Toffee_Penny

Contact the Council Tax office Monday and explain the circumstances, I'm surprised they let you offer that amount in the first place. :eek:


Offer what you can reasonably afford and stick to it. Council Tax arrears needs to be classed as priority debt but you need to be able to live comfortably aswell, they will understand.

weezerfly30

phew!!!, will get the other half to ring them, cant belive this is hat they asked for, it's stupid!!! i'm not disputing it needs paying, but then it took them over 3.5 months to tell us!!!!
guess they are getting a phone cal monday!!

thanks

gettingbetter

Hi Weez

As above please speak to them they can be quite human
what ever you do dont ignore it and hope it will go away

thats what i did and they took me to court and made me br

i learnt the hard way

kas xx

fatbelly

I agree with TP - this is the time of year when they'd LIKE everything cleared by 5th April but it just isn't possible in some situations.

So they SHOULD agree to spread the arrears so that it is all cleared by March 2010.

Contact the CAB if you still have problems.

clou19750

Do some waterworks .. and they will reduce it... it happened to me about 3 years ago.... i owed 4000 in council tax!!... now i owe about 1500 something.. it can be done deffo! Good Luck and i was 38 weeks pregnant then... and 2 days later my boy was born!!! :-D x

gettingbetter

do please come back and tell
how you get on

kas xx

weezerfly30

thanks everyone, will keep you all posted

VanillaDelia

Give them a ring and get something sorted because 1 payment behind and 2 reminder letters and they will put it to court.

We were 1 payment behind and had 2 reminders, they took it to court and then we had to make them an offer per month until the end of the tax year. They also added 1 installment in charges so it took us 2 months behind.

weezerfly30

we had apparently had letters, but never got them!!!! we got the info on the council tax one day and the £500 demand the next!!!!

boredofbeingathome

Hi, i had a quick look on west sussex website.

Found this link
http://www.adur.gov.uk/council-tax/payment-difficulties.htm Not sure whether it is your council, but on the main website there are links to all the councils.
I think it is important to get everything down, such as when you contacted them, dates etc if you have a rough idea.
Also if necessary do a SOA for yourself and state how much you can afford to them.
I would request that they send out copies of these letters and to which house they sent them. If they sent them to the old address, then they are clearly operating on a clerical mistake, which you shouldn't have to rectify.
Ask them for a reasonable amount of time to pay, and give them a date for which you expect to have it paid by. A friend of mine was in severe arrears, but pointed out that it would be paid by this date and backed it up with a letter. If bailiffs become involved the recovery time is longer i would suspect, so a date for their books would be good.
Of course all councils operate under a variety of guidelines so i may be jumping the gun with that one.
Good luck.