Council tax issue

SlaterG

I wasn't sure which forum to put this in, apologies if it is the wrong one.


My partner and I are having some trouble with the council. We moved house recently within the same borough and had a week overlap between the two properties. I tried to speak to a human being at the council and tried to e-mail them and got nowhere. So, finally I filled in their online form and waited. I received an e-mail request to set up e-billing for council tax and set this up. Under this account number I had details of my old property and payments made and my new property and details of my future payments by direct debit. I was pleased and thought this was all sorted.


Fast forward three months and we have received a summons for unpaid council tax. Having puzzled and re-read the summons, we have realised that the council set us up a second council tax account which covered the week overlap between the two properties. But they never told us that they did this, we thought our current council tax account covered us and we have been making payments on this!!! Having gone through our paperwork all I have found for this second account is one statement from months ago-admittedly, we took no notice of the account number on it, we assumed it was our normal council tax account and nothing on this statement explains that this is a second account. Also, it didn't come with anything detailing payment methods-which would have alerted us that this bill was not covered by direct debit.


I called this morning to pay the costs (I have no desire to go to court) and complain as the council website states that we should have got a letter giving us seven days to pay before invoking a summons-this would have alerted us to the issue and we would have paid immediately. They insist that they sent this letter out and when I said that we had nothing arrive, they just said it wasn't their fault and they couldn't be blamed for the failure of Royal Mail! I think it is ludicrous that a £30 bill has now become £100 because a) they never explained to us that a second account was being opened not covered by our existing direct debit and b) they didn't send out a reminder letter-because I don't believe they sent anything out. How can we be held responsible for a reminder we never received, especially if we did not expect it?! I can't prove we didn't receive the letter-surely they should have to prove we did receive the letter?!


I suppose my big question is, assuming my complaint fails (although I know I am in the right here, I don't have faith in the council to admit anything), is there anything that goes on my record or my partner's? I did pay them today to stop the court action, does that make a difference?

warmhands.coldheart

Good to see Public Sector incompetence is UK wide and not just my area....