Council tax issue

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Can Council seize your house over failure to pay Council tax?.

LDNSurrey

I’m new here so rather than start a new thread…
I moved into a property in 2022, informed the council tax authority and had email confirmation of my new council tax account etc but no council tax account number, after following up at least four times in 2022 and three times in 2023 then around four times in 2024, all responses where scripted ‘just keep checking your self service log in’. My self serve account has always been blank, logged in correctly and I can see basic personal information but no account or financials. Then in 2024 I was posted a refund, bear mind I had no council tax reference and had not been able to pay, this was sent to me at the address I updated them with in 2022.

Again when calling I received same advice to check self serve account.

April 2025 I called and spent four hours between multiple departments to hear an admission from a supervisor’We can see your notification from 2022 but for some reason your account was never set up correctly’ ‘it’s an admin error’ this call was from my business landline , I had to play the call back to believe what I heard.

The account error is now fixed, but immediately they issued arrears notices for the period 2022 to 2024, how can they issue back dated arrears for an account that didn’t exist until 2025?

Anyone had this happen? 

la531983

Did you put the money to one side to pay the bill when it came?

fatbelly

The money would be owed from 2022 but due to their admission of error I would expect them to work with you regarding payment.

Any problem - contact your new councillor after Thursday. Likely to be a newbie from Reform if you believe the media.

MeteredOut

Councils should be forced to introduce back-billing rules similar to energy suppliers - that would encourage them to get their admin right.

But, that doesn't exist, so, as above, hopefully you've set the amount due aside, and see it as a benefit that you've been getting a littler bit of interest on the councils money.

saajan_12

LDNSurrey said:

The account error is now fixed, but immediately they issued arrears notices for the period 2022 to 2024, how can they issue back dated arrears for an account that didn’t exist until 2025?

Because you still lived there and hence were the person responsible for council during that period. 

However since you knew CT was not being paid for that period, you checked the council tax band and hence saved the amount for each month since 2022. So should now be able to pay it off, and keep the £100 odd in interest as compo.