I have been bullied and manhandled by my local authority contractors

RobertoMoir

Widelats wrote: »

If they had no warrant they were not allowed in your house in the first place.

On the one hand what you say is correct, on the other hand it's irrelevant; bailiffs chasing council tax would have a warrant.

Norfolk_Jim

I think you have had a really bad experience and I'm sorry at the lack of sympathy for you on these boards. You'd get better support on the Debt Free Wannabee board and maybe some help to get on your feet again. You certainly should avoid the judgemental stuff your getting here.
First though - I'm afraid the Bailiffs can act like that because its very hard for you to prove it. No doubt the police know them very well because you will not be the first person to have become physical with them. Your reaction was understandable but ill adviced. You can get all the advice you need on what bailiffs can or cant do over on the Debt free board, including what steps you can or cant take now to complain about the poor treatment.
I'm afraid Bailiffs are pretty heartless in order to do the job they do.
I dont think theres much you can do about it now, faults on both sides, no way to prove things etc etc, so my advice would be to put it behinnd you and become part of the debt free wannabe board and put your efforts into getting back on a firm footing so such a horrible thing doesnt happen to you again.

RobertoMoir

Norfolk_Jim wrote: »

You can get all the advice you need on what bailiffs can or cant do over on the Debt free board, including what steps you can or cant take now to complain about the poor treatment..

Or he could reply to my post here and get the same advice i'd have given in the DFW board and answer the questions I've asked here which I or one of the other bailiff experts from dfw would only need to ask again if the thread got re-started on dfw..

Amistoso_2

pay your bloody bills then you wouldn't have had all this hassle!!!

Hmmm, should I pay my council tax this month or save the money for a rainy day!!! you've nobody to blame but yourself here OP, sort out your priorities, you as good as put your wife in this situation and your behaviour sounds as out of order as your trying to make out the bailiffs were

voiceofreason

....also, if you're paying £20k/annum income tax or whatever, how come you reckon you're living on a pittance?

That kind of income tax bill should mean you're at least on £50k gross, unless I've got my sums wrong?

sagalout1954

I don't get it - your wife opens the door to male total strangers, completely unannounced one of them promptly puts his foot in the door..............she should have started SCREAMING.

Crikey, you'd have heard me from John O'Groats to Lands End, you need to give her lessons (& put a safety chain on your door). It would have been better if she'd made such a racket THEY would have called the Police and the whole sorry business might have been less traumatic for you both with them present from the start.

Surely what you owe after the court case is more than your initial debt to the Council, they'll be clawing that back plus costs, with the Court sticking a fine on top. Lesson learnt - don't stick your head in the sand! Doesn't even sound like you responded to the Council summons otherwise you might have been offered a halfway reasonable method of stage payment.

IMO you should chalk this up to experience and perhaps visit CAB for some financial advice to help you cope and prioritise, because sadly you definitely made a whopping error of judgement on this occasion.

Hope things go better for you in the future though.

Norfolk_Jim

RobertoMoir wrote: »

Or he could reply to my post here and get the same advice i'd have given in the DFW board and answer the questions I've asked here which I or one of the other bailiff experts from dfw would only need to ask again if the thread got re-started on dfw..

Yeah he could but I think he needs some wider advice since all his savings are gone now and his business is faltering. There no slight intended against the knowledgeable posters on here, just the nasty ones.

Meromanche

Thank you all for your comments. I really want to move on and forget this rather violent episode in my life so will post on this for the very last time.

Up until end of 2008 we saved money, money we have used to live on since the business has not able to pay me. I could have actually claimed benefit from the day I stopped paying myself. I not looking for praises, I just did not believe in scrounging.
I could have also chosen to close the business and put three people out of work. That would have been the easy route and really not me.

I believed that having £1,500 in an emergency fund just in case our boiler breaks down or something dreadful happened to a loved one in either my original country or my wife's was an absolute must. I was obviously very mistaken. If this happens now, I am not sure what we will do but there must be a special DSS fund somewhere to get a loan from. ;-)

I guess that I was looking for sympathy I do not deserve as I created the issue in the first place. Prioritising my business over my family seemed the right thing to do at the time. Burrying my head in the sand for a whiloe and expecting this to pass was a mistake.
However, I believed that contacting the council, telling them of my situation and asking for a few days to fill in the rather long form would have stopped the bailiffs coming to my door. After all the council officer said that it would. I should also have contacted the bailiffs to ensure that they spoke to each other. Having now spoken to the same and now very apologetic council officer, it looks like I may get some of the money back as I really did not have to pay council tax for this year.

I am very disappointed by the police response and the evident support they showed to the bailiffs.

I still do not believe that the three people who came to my door should have behaved the way they did. And if something like this was to happen again (not this it ever will), I would certainly handle it very differently.
Thank you for the advice on making a complaint but the chances of getting anywhere with a complaint are absolutely nil. Therefore spending time on this would only waste very precious time.

Time that I now need to fill in as many benefit forms as I am entitled to and claim for as long as legally possible. ;-)

Rant on....

tandraig

scuse me - but am i the only one who has noticed that this debt was council tax? which would have gone to court - and resulted in either imprisonment or a court order on his wages? since when did councils send in bailiffs?
something wrong here - either with the OP, he is not telling the truth about the debt.
or he has been through court process and the court sent in the bailiffs! cos he refused to pay.
oh, and the police tend to side with the legal process - even if bailiffs get too rough! this makes me believe that OP was one in the wrong - besides him having enough money to make a payment of £1500, he claims poverty! tough mate, poverty is not having £1.50 in bank account!
no sympathy from me here - I am sorry your wife was scared - but in my eyes - that was YOUR fault!! pay your way, pay your debts and DONT try to screw the system!

woody01

Norfolk_Jim wrote: »

Yeah he could but I think he needs some wider advice since all his savings are gone now and his business is faltering. There no slight intended against the knowledgeable posters on here, just the nasty ones.

Sorry but you are almost as naive as the OP.
The bloke didn't pay his council tax but had savings........are you one of these 'bill dodgers' aswell?

Time that I now need to fill in as many benefit forms as I am entitled to and claim for as long as legally possible. ;-)

And there you have it!