Over £20,000 of urgent debt, bailiffs, warrants and medical issues

Larry123

Good afternoon everyone. I'm not sure if there is an introduction page on this forum but you'll probably know me pretty well by the end on this post.

Having read a lot of advice from this forum, it seemed like the right step to take in obtaining some help and advice regarding my situation and there seems to be some amazing people in this community.

I guess its a lot to read but I have filled the post with information that I am sure I would be asked to provide later on. You have no idea how grateful I am to anyone who can offer their time and help here. I feel I am in it pretty deep and cannot figure out where to go from here. My whole life is being effected. Work, relationship, family and personal.

I am a 24 year old man. I run my own business doing contract environmental services for councils. I live in a mortgaged property since 18 and after 3 years rough going with the business, I have found myself buried deep in debt and have developed severe anxiety and depression along the way.

The debts/arrears. It would seem best to just list them.
> £6,000 Parking fines With Bailiffs at various stages.
> £6,500 Equipment hire company Informal agreement in place until I default.
£3,400 HMRC Immediate payment required, no daily fines yet.
£137 Virgin Media No arrangement.
£350 EON Gas/Electric 4 days to make min payment of £100 or more voluntary pre paid or court order.
£1,800 Mortgage 1 week away from >3 months arrears = repossession procedures begin
£900 Van Finance Arrangement in place, £300/month on top of monthly payments of £370. Completely unaffordable but managed to maintain as if I don't, my van is gone.
£600 Equipment finance No arrangement
£450 Council Tax With bailiff, no warrant yet.
£350 Water Co. No arrangement.
£400 Court fines For driving without insurance. Please don't judge, an absolute genuine mistake. Drove brothers car. I have two of my own and would have just used one of mine if I knew I wasn't covered. This fine may be reduced after court hearing next month.
Total: £20,887

Expenditure/month
£600 Mortgage interest only
£13 House and contents insurance
£10 Water
£75 Gas/electric
£42 Phone and BB
£39 Mobile
£85 Council tax
£70 Food
£100 Van insurance
£370 Van finance (final payment sept '14)
£335 Equipment finance (desperately trying to sell)
£80 Business insurance
Total:£1,819
£500-£1000 Fuel and staff wages vary dramatically

Income
One off payment of £1,700 being received on May 1st
One off payment of £2,300 being received within 4 weeks
Guaranteed income from work ~£2000/month
One off jobs in between, unreliable income. ~£0-£1,000/month
Potential extra income of 2x £6,000 in May and Aug depending on success of tender (likely to high)

Where I am at so far

Ignoring the parking tickets at first, I have cancelled all my direct debits and making payments all over the place to basically who ever called me last. Those of less importance such as energy companies etc are being ignored completely. Running costs of business is high and struggle to make large payments as I need the money to run the business.

Parking tickets
I have received these parking tickets due to parking on a single yellow line on my street. They are mostly the result of finishing work at 2am in the morning, returning home to find no permit spaces and not being able to wake up at 8 am to move my van. The traffic warden would religiously come to my street knowing I could be ticketed. They are also the results of absolute depression and not having the will to get out of bed to move the van. I am fending off the bailiffs left right and centre and have literally begged to the council for these tickets to be withdrawn. They have arrogantly declined. I did not follow standard dispute procedure with any tickets due to depression and couldnt afford to pay them at the time as I had too much dept and was also spending several hundred pounds of urgently needed therapy. I have contacted CAB and waiting for their call back. Lawyers say they are not able to help. The council is ruining my life.

I could go on forever but I think this might be a good place to stop. Again, anyones time is appreciated beyond beleif.

Please help!! I feel lost and alone.

Harry

Meatloaf1981

Harry, you have a lot of different threads to your problem and they all need examining individually and in detail, in my view, by someone suitably qualified. I would definitely recommend speaking to Citizens Advice who will be able to break it down into it's component parts and point you in the right direction. Some of it looks like it can be dealt with by managing your finances better, but some of it also sounds like you need sound legal advice to find the right solution. Whatever you decide, you've done the right thing talking about it and not burying your head in the sand.

welcumfy

Have you tried the Business Debtline and National Debtline? Might be worth a phonecall to them. I hope you get the help you need.

FireWyrm

I second Meatloaf, you are deep in the do-do and generally the advice will be slim in these cases. You need urgent professional advice and we clearly are not the ones to offer this. However, some thoughts.

1) Speak to HMRC urgently. They are usually willing to come to terms and can be extremely helpful, but only if they know your situation in detail. You will need to schedule a one-to-one interview with someone who has sufficient seniority to advise here. There may be that they can do something from their end that mitigates that issue for the time being.
2) Utility companies have been fairly vocal in their assertions that they will 'help' people genuinely in financial trouble. I suggest you call them and request to speak to a senior person or advisor who has the authority to make more long term arrangements.
3) You absolutely must deal with those parking fines. They are only going to get worse, so anything you can do to get rid of them asap, even if you have to default somewhere else, you are going to have to do.
4) Any chance of a secured loan against your business?
5) You have £6000 coming in in May, so I would deal with the parking fines then. I would then deal with the Council Tax since they are nasty !!!!!!s and dont tend to give a rats behind about your real circumstances. On the plus side, nothing they levy against can belong to the business or be used in the course of earning a living, so, I guess the answer is, what else could they potentially levy against?
6) Its a long shot, but what have you got to sell? Any electrical equipment, computers (not used for business), musical instruments, any jewellery, furniture, appliances?


That's about all I can think of right now. You need to sit down with a real person and go through all of this right from the start. Your order of priority would seem to be parking, council, hmrc and then sundry others as you see fit.

The final and nuclear option is to simply fold and go bankrupt. It might be your best option given the sheer amount of immediate issues that you simply cannot address easily.

theoretica

Especially for the medium and longer term I advise you to separate your business and personal accounts.

Do you still have two cars as well as the van and can you sell them? Do you have a spare bedroom you could rent out for some extra income?

kazwookie

The money you have coming in in a few weeks, a can you ask for some up front, in advance, and pay the parking and HMRC

Larry123

Thanks for the replies guys. Some good pointers that I will be getting straight onto Monday morning.. I wish it was Monday morning. You know when you really want to crack on and get things sorted but its 9pm and there's nothing you can do.

Just so you all know, I am very efficient when it comes to spending money and there is absolutely nothing I could cut down on or trim. I don't go out, buy takeaways etc. All money that comes in either goes towards running the business or paying people off. And if I ever feel I need to spend a little on myself, it goes towards practical items such as a new tool or something for the land rover but as of late, this is very rare.

In brief. I am selling what I can. I will ring the organisations you have all suggested asap. Business accounts are already separated but when funds are as low as they are at the moment, I have to use both for everything. I will speak to my creditors as you have suggested and explain what I can to the right people. In terms of the bankruptcy route, this is something I would avoid at all costs. I would rather lose everything and fall back on family and friends than declare bankruptcy. The main reason is due to the fact that I love the world/travelling (something I havent done for a while) and may want to live somewhere else one day; however I am looking closely at Individual Voluntary Arrangements but I still feel there are better routes to take. A business loan from an organisation would not be possible. My credit rating is, as I am sure you can imagine, diabolical. The only loan I could obtain is that of one from a family member, namely my grandpa but he has given me a lot over the years and my grandma has just been diagnosed with sarcoma cancer so there is no way I would want to put this stress on them. They are both 89 in Sept.

In a bit more detail.
Starting with the parking tickets, I am not really very keen on paying these. None of them. They were unfairly issued, the amount I owe per ticket is completely out of proportion for the crime. £450 for parking on a single yellow which the council have now agreed to turn into spaces, as well as the fact the council turned 9 permit bays on my street and the neighbouring street into 2 hour bays without going through the correct procedures; the highways officers did not authorise it, making the parking situation even worse and then fining us because we have no where to park. I will not pay these fines.

As far as I can tell, there is nothing in my house anyone can levy which is not for either business use or necessity. I do not own any luxuries to speak of. In terms of things to sell, I have already began looking around. I have "downgraded" a few things recently. ie sold my inherited expensive sofa and bought a cheaper one, and same with an office chair, netting in total about £500. Unfortunately this had to go towards paying my girlfriend back for food and paying some wages I owed.

I have two vehicles, the work van and an old landrover (value around £900). The vehicle is currently SORN so it is not costing me anything, oh and its also in someone else's name so it doesn't get nicked! Selling this vehicle is my absolute last resort. It is the only thing keeping me sane. Its one of the few things I own outright and its my hobby, pride and joy. I know it might sound a bit trivial but I cannot let it go. I had a 2 day anxiety attack starting Thursday and working on my land rover was the only thing that got me through it. I hope you can understand.

There is one option I haven't mentioned but it would mean wasting a lot of my grandparents money (as they helped pay for a lot of the start up costs). I could close the business, sell everything related and get a job else where. I have been offered several jobs recently but I struggle to think of how I would cope under someone else's employ when I have been working for my self for 6 years. If I sold all the business assets, I would have enough to cover all the debts and have a couple of thousand left over to keep me covered while looking for work. I guess this is something I should really start considering as the business is obviously not turning a profit at the moment. The only thing that puts me off this is the fact that this could all change now I have a friend working for the company who has no expenditure and is passionate about getting the company going.

Thanks again peeps. Enjoy the rest of your evening.

BillJones

Harry365 wrote: »

Just so you all know, I am very efficient when it comes to spending money and there is absolutely nothing I could cut down on or trim. I don't go out, buy takeaways etc.

That's not really true though, is it? You've spent a fortune on illegal parking and subsequent charges, which is completely frivolous and unnecessary, for example. You've also spent money on Virgin Media that you could not afford.

If you genuinely want to tackle your problems, you need to own up to them, not pretend that they were not caused by your decisions.

What's done is done, but if you are going to get through this, you need to accept your mistakes, and work to fix them.

hettiecarro

Hi
It may well be that your option of winding up the business is your best way forward. It may sound drastic, and I'm sure you would prefer to work for yourself, but your health is obviously suffering at the moment with the stress of all this.
Getting up and going to do a job for a fair days pay and then being able to walk away from it at the end of the day can actually be very liberating - and leaves the overhead and administration worries to someone else.
Whatever you decide to do I think you need to see your doctor and get some short term help to cope with the anxiety and panic attacks.
Good luck with it all - and keep posting for further advice and support.

Larry123

BillJones wrote: »

That's not really true though, is it? You've spent a fortune on illegal parking and subsequent charges, which is completely frivolous and unnecessary, for example. You've also spent money on Virgin Media that you could not afford.

If you genuinely want to tackle your problems, you need to own up to them, not pretend that they were not caused by your decisions.

What's done is done, but if you are going to get through this, you need to accept your mistakes, and work to fix them.

I've obviously made mistakes. Mismanagement of the company would be the one to point out though. I wouldn't call phone and broadband bills a mistake. They are not only vital to everyday life but an absolutely necessity for work. Please note that I do not have virgin television. I don't even have a TV.

As for the parking, this situation is entirely consequential of not only my circumstances but the numerous external influences ranging from getting home from work at stupid o'clock to someone without a permit parking in a permit bay, forcing a permit holder to park on the yellow line and consequently being ticketed. I bought a house in 2007 that is not suitable to my needs in 2012,13 & 14. This is something I can do nothing about as I do not have the money to move or rent business premises. Until I find a way to increase my income, it is the definition of a catch 22 situation. I have no choice but to park my large work van on a yellow line when there is absolutely no alternative place to park. On top of everything else previously mentioned, the council granted planning permission (works now completed) for 16 new premises on my street with parking for only 8 vehicles, completely ignoring every resident who mentioned parking and the planning meeting. Again, making the situation even more impossible for current residents who then have to pay the fines.

I am fully aware of the seriousness of my situation and as you said, what's done is done but the truth of the matter is I am still in this situation and I am continuing to get parking tickets. There is nothing I can do about this. If you think there is then I would invite you to visit where I live.

It is not irresponsible to stand up for yourself you know. Just because the council has issued a ticket, does not mean I should bow down and pay it. Yes my vehicle was parked illegally but should I be the sole bearer of responsibility for this when there is so much influencing the situation? The problem is, there are too many people who back down as soon as anyone tries to show some sort of authority and its completely ridiculous. The government has created a world for us that requires us to use vehicles but then doesn't give us anywhere to put these vehicles. What ever man, I asked for help and advice. You don't seem to give a lot of that around here.

Larry123

hettiecarro wrote: »

Hi
It may well be that your option of winding up the business is your best way forward. It may sound drastic, and I'm sure you would prefer to work for yourself, but your health is obviously suffering at the moment with the stress of all this.
Getting up and going to do a job for a fair days pay and then being able to walk away from it at the end of the day can actually be very liberating - and leaves the overhead and administration worries to someone else.
Whatever you decide to do I think you need to see your doctor and get some short term help to cope with the anxiety and panic attacks.
Good luck with it all - and keep posting for further advice and support.

Thank you. its definitely something I am strongly considering. There might even be scope to restart the company in the future once I've got on top of things.

I am already prescribed Valium but refuse long term medication. I only take Valium when absolutely necessary as I do not want to be come reliant on it. I actually keep it at a neighbours house so that it is not readily available.