Council kept deducting AOE after debt part of IVA + overpaid council tax

savingsavy

Hi, I really need some help with this as it is very convoluted. I am going to do my best to explain the situation as simply as possible. I would be very grateful for your insight and advice. 

My partner and I started an IVA in 2018. 

On it there are 2 council tax bills for the year 17/18 and the year 18/19. My partner had an Attachment Of Earnings order for both these bills before the IVA. This is the main reason why we went for the IVA because it was not leaving us enough money for necessities, plus we had other debts. 

Since the IVA started the AOE should have stopped. However, the deductions continued at a smaller amount for several months. 

(Yes, my partner realises his mistake for not checking his payslips, he was expecting a drop in pay around that time and the AOE went unnoticed). 

Since our income was reduced (both his and mine) after the IVA was set up, we carried on robbing Peter to pay Paul as we were prioritising the £100 IVA payment so that it does not fail. 

As a result of the extra AOE the council was taking and our stupidity and mis-management of income and expenses we ended up not being able to pay the 19/20 council tax bill. This was taken to court and an AOE order was again issued against my partners pay. So since the IVA in 2018 there has been a monthly AOE deducted from his pay until around May last year when my partner noticed the AOE  still on his payslip, after the AOE for the 19/20 was paid off. His work apologised for the mistake, apparently they were sent the AOE order again by the council but payroll did not check the date and just processed it. We spoke to the council, who transferred the extra payment from the AOE against the then current year of 20/21. Since then we carried on making monthly payments, after the council sent us a new recalculated bill for the year 20/21 until that was paid off. 

Now, we downloaded the MSE budget a few days ago to help us keep track of things and start an emergency fund. 

We noticed that on the new council tax bill, they carried forward over half of last year’s 20/21 bill which was paid up in full by the AOE and monthly instalments.

Same thing for last year’s 20/21 bill carrying forward a balance from the previous year 18/19 which was already part of the IVA.  

So I went through the last 4 years worth of council tax bills, bank statements + my partners payslips. 

What we worked out is that since the IVA we should have had a clean slate with the council tax. Only bills since the IVA (Nov 2018) were due and needed to be paid. 

We had 3 bills since then totalling £4129 (including universal credit discount for the last 2 bills): 1 Apr 19 to 31 Mar 20, 1 Apr 20 to 31 Mar 21 and 1 Apr 21 to 31 Mar 22 (This bill, just received,  is showing a total of £2107: £1294 for 21/22 + balance brought forward from 20/21 of £813.)

However, when we count all the payments made to the council since the IVA, the total is £ 3665: AOE £3185 and Direct Debit £481

It works out that we only owe £464 to clear our council tax balance including the new 21/22 bill. 

So my question is how do I approach this with the council? They have obviously made mistakes:

1. They did not stop the AOE once the outstanding balance was included in the IVA from Nov 2018
2. When we told them they were receiving money that my partner’s payroll was wrongly deducting from his pay from AOE, they did not transfer all the AOE deducted by his payroll to our council tax account. 
3. They keep carrying forward amounts from previous council tax bills that were part of the IVA or have already been paid.  

My partner’s work payroll also messed up by:

1. Not checking what AOE they were deducting
2. They also deducted £1219 more  than the total amount of the 3 AOE orders. He asked and received all the AOE orders notices his payroll had, so we were able to work this out. 

We also messed up by not paying enough attention and letting things get this bad. 

When I contacted the IVA IP, all they are interested to know is how much of the balance on the IVA from the council did we pay off, so that they can adjust it on their records. They said they cannot help if the council kept taking AOE. 

All we want is that the council offset all the payments they received from us since the IVA against all our council tax bills since the IVA.

How do you suggest I go about doing this? Are there letter templates I can use? 

If you’ve read up to here, thank you very much and we really appreciate your help.