Please help, massive council tax arrears! SCOTLAND

pinklipy

UPDATE!!!!!!!!!

The man at the council just called me and they have accepted my proposal!!!! What a relief and i will finally sleep tonight! The first payment is to come out 1st Jan untill arrears are cleared (3and a half years) but I don't have to start paying current council tax untill next march/April I think so I couldn't of asked for a better outcome really!

Tixy: thank you for your post and I am going to go upstairs tonight once daughter in bed and have a look through her presents and see what I can return as I need to get £300 between now and 1st jan, although I can get about half that from working every sat from now untill Xmas so may only need to return £100 worth.
I am going to wait untill my baby is born and my mat leave kicks in and tax credits go up then I will post an up to date SOA on a new thread as I'm sure all the fab people on mse will be able to help even more on where I can cut back.

To all the people that took their time to read my posts and offer their advice I say a massive Thank You to all of you :-)

goodz

Great, that's good news, well done, congrats. Yes, well done you for negotiating with them and well done them for being civilised and fairly generous about it ie letting you spread the payments over time. That's good that they've acknowledged the reality that you'll need some time. Good.

Re presents maybe consider second hand. A few years ago some kids I know wanted Scalextric, the electric racing car game, so I considered spending fifty quid which would have got one small bit of track and about one car. Or not even that. Hmm. Then I thought, well, go on then, that's not much, ok it's going to have to be more like a couple of hundred quid or more to get something halfway decent. Next thought - ruddy heck. Two hundred! Get real, I wasn't intending to spend that much. And if I do then they'll think I've gone mad. They'll feel weird about accepting something that costs that much. In fact it could cause a problem. Knowing the parents they might even refuse it and tell me I've gone wrong etc.

So then I went to a jumble sale and got a huge system with five cars and about 50 feet of track and all the bits and pieces, evidently someone's whole collection. Which by today's prices would be heading towards about four hundred pounds or even more. And guess how much I paid for the whole lot? Just three quid! Fantastic.

And bundled with it was another whole electric car system of a different sort with a lot of track and a load of cars. So they had all the fun of that second whole system as well.

Another time I found about a dozen kids' toys on the street including a couple of big motorised soft toys and all sorts. They looked like new and totally clean so we decided that they were ok. I gave them all to my mate and he said his kids loved them.

So you can get much better value with second hand stuff and me and my friends all reckon that second hand is fine. On the other hand maybe you wouldn't like anything second hand so if that's your decision then fine. But if you are ok with seconds then maybe go round some jumble sales and you can pick up lots of nice stuff to make up for the £300.

Of course there's also always lots of very cheap bargains on ebay as well so that might be worth a look as well as jumble sales.

Hope this may be of use.

Ok, again, well done you and them, it's nice to hear that you've managed to sort that out and get on top of it. And that they were quite helpful rather than hammering you. All the best.

pinklipy

Goodz!! Thanks for such a great positive reply, your posts are soo funny and make me laugh out loud! I'm so glad they accepted, my 2 page letter was hand written ;-) and I took it to him personally, also emphisised on the heavily pregnant side of things so I think it all went in my favour. He was really nice and suggested to me that I leave my first payment untill Jan and that 2012/2013 payments don't start untill April so that's great. Think the next few years will be tough but I think il feel really good about myself when I come to the end of the 3+ years and have actually paid back £13000.
I'm not in any position to rule out 2nd hand so thanks for the tips and thoughts, going to be a lot more scrupulous (if that's the right word) with my ££ or lack off it from here on in!

Thanks again!!

pauletruth

pinklipy wrote: »

That's also why iv put that next year will be different and Im not going to have the same budget as before. I have always been in a payment plan with my council tax though, it's not like iv been evading it and been in hiding for 10 years.
Believe me I have learnt my lesson and I never asked for sympathy in the 1st place- why would I. I have no other debt so spending £600 was manageable and clearly if I had got this bill 2 months ago I wouldn't have spent £X on Xmas but I'm already finished Xmas shopping.
I have already changed in the last few days alone, I spent half the amount I normally would on food shopping today and spent £0 over weekend and took my daughter to park instead of soft play.
I have put my proposal into council so just a waiting game now.

13000 says you have been avoiding it. if you miss just one paymet you will be in court. a 1000 for presents. lets see if you spent that on what you owe it would soon start to go away.

how are you funding this spending when your about to go onto mat benifits. and if you have 600 spare a month why have you not been paying it to clear your debt.

Cherryjack

just a few toys from tesco half price sale will do little ones..i have a 5 year old x..then a big stocking anf fill it with lots of wrapped up items (poundland) believe or not do disney car stuff for yes £1.00... if your child is anything like mine they are most impressed with wrapped up sweets lol
Asdas were doing great gifts for £10.00.. plus also do family buy stuff also? i really have to cut back buying too much as he just wouldnt get to play with it all.. ive still got stuff in boxes from last xmas un-opened from all the gifts. Even disney paris for the little ones, u can shop around and get a day trip for £19.00... so still enjoy life but just be really savy..
We have arthur cinema day planned (using my clubcard vouchers to pay for the tickets) using my costa card points for coffees and cakes.. and then will do an early bird at the harvester..so will cost next to nothing for a fab day out.:)

redpete

TIv spent roughly around £500 on my 4 year old so far and have about another £100 to spend so in totall £600, and that includes me cutting back from previous years.

Blimey - that is a huge amount to spend on any child for Christmas, but a 4-yr old! And only yesterday you were still planning on spending the additional £100 despite knowing all about the £13k debt you have.

Our 3 are now 17, 19 and 21 and we might have spent £400 on all of them in an expensive year.

pinklipy

Thanks for all the great tips cherryjack! Much appreciated :-) I'm going to save all my tesco vouchers from now untill next Christmas so it's not such a big hit on the purse. And plan things a lot better, im hoping it's not going to be as bad as I think it may be, especially now that iv joined this site.
I do wish however that some of you would maby back of a little, today has been a good day and yet pauletruth your still trying to put me down, And redpete I have already stated in an earlier post that I'm going to return a bit of daughters Xmas presents so no need to go on and on.

onthebreadline

Looking for lots and help and info myself, and have just came across a site "consumer action group" in this site the following;
Hi just a quick question if anyone can let me know..

how far back/years can a council claim council tax arrears???

ANSWER - 6 YEARS

I'm no expert (or I wouldn't be looking for help myself) but this gave me a glimpse of hope, just need to find out if it is applicable in Scotland ???

PS Sorry if someone else has mentioned this, but in my haste I have not read all your replies (but I will, as I am in a very similar boat) from all the good people on this site, they all have a lot of good sensible advice to give - would be lost without them all.

Good Luck and keep us up to date

Swans1912

Don't hold off on putting up your SOA... even if the income will change the amounts you are spending might not... we can help you save now rather than in 2/3 months time.

Also... sounds like selling the other house is a sensible idea. If the current people leave and you have trouble renting it out then you will have to cover the shortfall. The money you got from a re-mortagage... did you and your sister take a split? If not then your sister owns more of the house than you.

beanielou

onthebreadline wrote: »

Looking for lots and help and info myself, and have just came across a site "consumer action group" in this site the following;
Hi just a quick question if anyone can let me know..

how far back/years can a council claim council tax arrears???

ANSWER - 6 YEARS

I'm no expert (or I wouldn't be looking for help myself) but this gave me a glimpse of hope, just need to find out if it is applicable in Scotland ???

PS Sorry if someone else has mentioned this, but in my haste I have not read all your replies (but I will, as I am in a very similar boat) from all the good people on this site, they all have a lot of good sensible advice to give - would be lost without them all.

Good Luck and keep us up to date

This is untrue.
It can be claimed back as far as needed.