Council question Mum's right to single occupancy discount

zzzLazyDaisy

Last year I was maliciously reported to the council by an anonymous caller for fraudulently claiming single person's discount. I sent the council the information they needed, and the matter was closed very quickly.

It was not a nice experience, but I understood that once the matter had been flagged up to them, the council had to investigate it.

00ec25

In my first home (age 28) I did not have a TV for 7 years, naturally every year I got a "threatening" letter from the TV licencing authority accusing me of evading the licence. First time I got it I was very annoyed at the tone of it, which was unnecessarily intimidating. In the second year I was incensed that they had not updated my records having written to them the previous year to say I had not intention of getting a TV. This continued for the next 7 years with the standard computer generated letter and me firing back a vindictive response.

Many years later I now understand that it is much more efficient for us the taxpayer to receive a heavy handed first letter which gets instant results through fear, than some mealy mouthed thing which goes straight in the bin. As a result, we the taxpayer, employ fewer civil servants to deal with chasing up debtors/evaders etc and collect taxes or revenue from those who "forgot" to pay on time but are esaily intimidated into responding.

as with everything in life there are trade offs, those of my parents generation (I'm a baby boomer too) whose standards were different inevitably get caught in the cross fire of having to deal with the modern generation who know the loopholes in the system and try it on, there is no point approaching such creatures softly. That's progress I can stomach.

droopsnout

Thank you to all for the more considered comments!

RayWolfe

Oh, my comment WAS considered. And yes I did think of Micheal Winner.
Sorry to get your gender wrong.

gordikin

Were the more considered comments the ones that agreed with you by any chance? Scan the original letter to your Mum and post a copy here for MSE members to look at and you will get true considered views.

ALIBOBSY

Just wanted to post to say I wasn't suggesting that you are doing anything wrong, just that you surely can see why the council would want to investigate?

I sympathise with your mum but that generation do tend to overreact when they get official letters and she may have read more into it than there was. The trouble is like many government/official letters they are general and often try to cover for many circumstances.
Like on here it is easy to misread the meaning behind the written word and different slants can be put on the same letter by different readers.

I know one of the common scams over here has been children buying parents properties cheaply, renting it back and then claiming housing benefit. This led to tightning of the rules about renting from relatives. Against that sort of background you can see why any simular situation would be flagged for investigation.
Sadly a minority have abused, stretched and defrauded virtually every area of benefits in this country. The rules are tightened up to combat this which leads to innocent people having to be investigated to ensure their claims are correct and fair.

I hope this is sorted quickly for your Mum and she then can put things into perspective and carry on with what sounds like a lovely positive retirement.

ali x

John_Pierpoint

I think a lot of the problem is that the generation before the war probably paid almost no tax.
Tax was something that "rich" people paid.

Now we live in a state run by politicians who see fit to "recycle" nearly 50% of our GDP through the tax man's coffers.

Once we all wake up to slaving half our lives for the government, we might see past the bribes and start getting a bit resentful.

junkmayle

Droopsnout - You cant really blame RayWolfe and Alibobsys comments. We were lucky enough to live in the Irish Republic for 9 months in 2006/7. Only when we returned after even that short time did we realise what a nasty, totalitarian type attitude there was, pervasive thought much of UK society and how people thought it was normal. They are frogs, permanently in the ever warming water; we jumped back in and realised just how hot the water really is.

RayWolfe

Oh please don't kid yourself that I know nothing about overseas jurisdictions. Some of the many things that I do know about are tax evasion, old people and people who plant themselves overseas; not necessarily in that order.
Surprised that you found the Daily Mail so accessible in foreign parts, but there you go, hatred of the UK is fairly portable.

Tigsteroonie

droopsnout wrote: »

I think that government, both national and local, has forgotten that it is there to serve the people, not bully them.

Yes they have. Such is the state of the UK government and civil service today.