Council Tax Court Costs

vax2002

You can attend court and ask where the magistrates are.
They dont like that one bit.
Ask them if this is actually a sitting court or a private room hired by the council..
get ready to drop through the floor when they answer...

RobertoMoir

linux_cat wrote: »

I am writing a letter that I will fax to the magistrates court outlining the above that will be given to the court clerk, I have also written to my local MP about this matter as I feel £120 for costs is way to high considering small claims court would only charge £30 for the amount owed, and this is just unfair to anyone that gets hit with this charge.

Is there any other advice you guys could give me?

You won't like this, but the best advice I can give you is pay up, and resolve never to let things get to this stage in the future.

Voyager2002

Contact an elected councillor: they are able to help and quite possibly might be willing.

linux_cat

Emailed both my local councillors and MP, im hoping at least one of them will get back to me. I woke up so angry this morning this is very much to do with principle and I sent the following to my council:

"Dear Miss

---

,

The fact that you are charging £120 for court costs for a £78.67 council tax payment is totally out of proportion, from my research this is an increase of £55, almost 100% on last year. This is clearly a way for the council to generate revenue, if the actual court costs where £120 I would understand, but this is not the case and the council has added markup for a profit.

Nowhere in the Local Government Finance Act does it stipulate that you can do this, if this is government legislation then please provide me with the relevant act and prove me wrong but as it stands what the council are currently doing is wrong.

I have bought my council tax up to date, as soon as I received the first written correspondance from yourselves (the court summons) you have no other reason to take this to court apart from to generate revenue for yourselves.

I urge you to reconsider your action as I will fight this by any means at my disposal. "

and I will fight this, its totally wrong im suppose to pay them £120 for something that is probably and admin error on their part there is no way they could of sent the letters otherwise I would of got them. Any other advice in fighting this.


This is more about how much they charge now, to think they are charging this amount to everyone in already difficult economic times is a disgrace.

linux_cat

update!!

I emailed my councillor, rang the council again and demanded the team leader ring me back.

He rang back and agreed to remove the court costs!! WOW thanks for the help guys..this forum just saved me £120! drinks on me!

CIS

I emailed my councillor, rang the council again and demanded the team leader ring me back.

I'm happy to help people (and its a good result for you) however I do disagree with councillors intervening in cases where a) the action has been taken correctly in law and b) they agreed to the costs and procedures used by the council. The councillors intervene in these case for one of two reasons - they want to curry favour with the electorate or they are in opposition and want to cause as many issues as possible for the main party & their policies.

John_Pierpoint

£120 quid for "court costs" sounds excessive to me.
What would you say is an average fee in this situation?
Just another example of illegal revenue raising?
If the banks have had their charges ruled as excessive, it is time that similar "fees" levied by a monopoly service provider in the public sector was subject to similar controls.