Council tax notice of enforcement

Irenekap · 26 January 2022 at 1:48PM

Hello MSE community,
I have a little issue and wanted to hear your thoughts and whether this has ever happened to you.

We moved into a new built flat in Wembley in August 2019. This was one of the brand new developments by Quintain Living and when we moved in we were probably one of the first tenants there. Construction was still going on on the floors above.

We tried to sign up for council tax but couldn’t. The London Borough Brent was telling us that the postcode is not recognised as it was a completely brand new building and they had to wait for Royal Mail to do some sort of ‘mapping’ to identify the postcodes and flat numbers so their system could be updated and we could sign up.

This went on for 6 months and I had on occasions reached out again to ask if there is an update, I have email correspondence, I was chasing them for payment! My apartment building suggested we put the money aside because chances are they will backdate it when their system is updated. Which we did. Eventually we moved out in February 2020, and at the time the response was the same - cannot take payments because the building doesn’t exist.

Fast forward to yesterday, almost 2 years later, where we received a notice of enforcement from a company called Newlyn, acting on behalf of the London Borough of Brent, asking us to pay £658.19 in council tax debt, and a ‘compliance stage’ fee of £75, total £733.19. It’s not a great time financially to now have to pay this so it’s annoying that it came in now, 2 years later!

I am just wondering if this ever happened to anyone and do we have any way of challenging this, showing proof of correspondence about willingness to pay at the time, arguing about its validity 2 years later, I am not sure.

Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much for your time.

Irene