payment plan set up but still got a dca letter

RR_summers

Hi everyone.

I moved area in Nov 2012. I informed my council of my new address. In December 2012 I received a letter for council tax arrears which were paid in installments on time every fortnight. That was settled and closed in April 2013.

Not had anything after that until 15th may when I received a letter stating an overpayment of housing benefit for £114.23.

I checked what the overpayment was for and it was correct.
I rang up and set up a payment plan. First payment of £14.23 on the 30th may and 5 £20 monthly payments on the 25th of each month.

I received another letter on the 21st May stating that the month I had asked them to put the account on hold had passed and they were considering further action.

I had not contacted them prior to the phone call on the 15th. Rang again and they had no idea about that letter as it was not showing on their system.mi was assured the payment plan was in place.

I made the payment on the morning of 30th may. In the afternoon I received a phone call from the council asking when I was going to make the payment. I advised them I had, they checked and confirmed I had.

Today I received 2 letters.

One from the council date 30th may stating that my payment plan of £20 per month commencing from 15th June was in place.

The next letter was dated 3rd june from a debt collection agency called PS&P stating that the council had referred my account to them for non payment for the total of £114.23. It said that it needs to be paid in full by 11th June.

Rang the council who confirmed I made my payment on time, confirmed a payment plan is in place but my account has been closed whatever that mean. They cannot tell me why it has been passed onto a debt collection agency.

I rang PS&P who said I had to pay it and it's probably for something else. (I don't live in the area anymore and paid my council tax so it can't be anything else) especially for the same amount.

Any ideas on what to do?
Thank you.

Powered_By_Pies

Sounds like a timing thing. Payment was made on the date their system probably assigned the debt to a DCA due to the payment not reaching them by the predetermined date on their system.

You can call the council for clarification and ask the debt to be reassigned back to them. They should be able to do this without too many issues. The main issue you may have is in the interim period your details will now also be loaded onto the DCA's system which obviously doesn't talk to the other system and will probably continue to generate the chasing letters until it's manually altered.

RR_summers

Thanks for your reply.

They didn't mention anything like that when I set up the plan. I paid it early morning on the 30th. The man who rang in the afternoon checked and confirmed they had received it so surely it shouldn't have any gone further?

I've just rang again to ask about the dca. He told me that my account was now closed and had been passed onto an assessor. He took my phone number to contact me regarding the outcome but he still couldn't tell me why it had been passed on when I had made the payment.

Powered_By_Pies

It sounds likely that the details on their system were updated in a quicker time frame than the payment was confirmed as received manually. It might be one of those timing things unfortunately.

You could write to the DCA with the heading 'under dispute' and explain the situation to them as well. Send a copy to the council and mark it FAO whoever you may have as a relevant contact there. The DCA might not listen to that in honesty, but if you mark the account as under dispute they should freeze it momentarily and conduct an investigation - if not, you might be able to raise a complaint with the OFT although that's where my knowledge just about dries up.

RR_summers

Just rang the council again. Spoke to a man who said it went to the dca on 19th may even though I set up the plan on the 15th.

All he said was it was classed as an urgent case and to ring back on Tuesday.