Council Tax - Court Summons

lincroft1710

f1r31c3r wrote: »

contacting your local constituent

The OP would be the "constituent". But since he lives in Australia, he won't have a local English MP.

CIS

I am seeing allot of this on this thread as well as else where. Those that are living abroad and let there property in the UK seem to have a mass delay on the postage and or lack of being informed.

Are you suggesting its a conspiracy ?

The legislation is set to 14 Days prior to any action to be taken. If the letter takes 14 days to get to you well ouch, another point where the current system is broken.

There has to be a limit in the system and 14 days works well in most cases.

kunekune22

14 days generally works provided the taxpayer is in the UK.

Interestingly, we received the summons today, it having been sent on 26 March. By air mail. None of the previous items had been - they really were sent by UK second class mail so far as we can tell, there is nothing on the envelope to indicate otherwise. That might be why some didn't arrive at all and others took 3-4 weeks. The official post office site says up to 12 weeks for surface mail to Oz. We have paid the undisputed amount - ie, the 300 in council tax - and are waiting for a response from Bradford before paying the extra amount for issuing the summons.

kunekune22

Well, we have good news. We paid the tax amount a couple of days ago, and also sent an email pointing out the problem with how they had been contacting us. We didn't pay the extra costs of the summons because we wanted to see what would happen. Two days after I posted on here, the summons arrived. Ironically, it was sent by airmail but still took 10 days to get here. Well, hubby's email did the trick - it wasn't strictly legally correct but he doesn't have to get it right as he isn't the lawyer in the family - and they have waived the summons costs. So we're sorted. And provided the tenants stay put, we won't be paying tax for a while on the property.

The advice: don't give up. However unlikely it seems, the people we dealt with did have some basic humanity (perhaps they were in a good mood after the by-election ... yup, this was Bradford city council.)

akthe1

Hi,

I received one summon last week, it was very disappointing when u keep paying for more 5 years without a miss payment and then suddenly due to some misunderstanding you are only missing half of a one month amount and they send u a summons. I think people out there who are taking benefits and not paying them a single penny are much better and they respect them too, and people who pay them, pay them taxes etc, they send bailllifs to them and summons, what a country we are living in. Anyway, I called them 2 days later, and explained and told them I have paid the balance today so you should cancel the summons and also the £95 court fee, ladt was very nice and she didnt say anything, and straightaway told me it has been cancelled and all is uptodate. i shared it so maybe helpful to you. cheers

colin_wintrich

JCR wrote: »

Hi all - through a slight oversight we missed paying our November and December council tax bills. When we realised this we paid the November one in January and are paying the December one this month. However, yesterday we received a Court Summons for £175 - £140 one month council tax and £35 court fees. I haven't heard of people being summons to court over one month in arrears before. We usually pay on time etc. but this does not seem to have been taken into account and we are being given no leeway whatsoever. I have written to them explaining the situation but am not holding out much hope.

If the £140 o/s balance is paid - presumably they will still chase us for court fees even tbefore?

I have had the same thing done to me last year, and i stupidly paid the illegal charges before realising i was being had.
The letter you will have received would have said 'summons' at the top. This is scare tactics by the council (and illegal), no court stamp on the letter you will see. I was £20 short of my council tax through an error on the council's part, but they intimidate you into thinking they can send bailiffs to take your property, this is not true. I had £65 added to my £20 and borrowed money to pay it. This year i will simply ask for an itemised bill (which is my right to do so when someone asks me for money), they will refuse and demand payment within 14 days as they did last year,..they will find me a little more clued up on the law than i was last year.
I urge anyone to read up on the wirral case or email the british constitution group to put your minds at ease,..you are not the criminal here.

snorebits

Hello everybody, I am posting fairly late on in this discussion, but I thought I would share how I managed to get the £65 summons cost returned. I will keep it fairly brief now, but if people want me to go into more detail I will happily do that, as I used the resources here when I first learnt of my penalty.

Jan 12

• received summons for late payment of council tax (late by 15 days), penalty of £65
• called to argue that hadn't had sufficient time to pay it, which was a waste of time as they have operators trained to fend you off.
• Wrote to challenge the charge, claiming I had not received correct notice, la la la

Feb 12

• As like most councils very slow to reply, but they refused to return it wasn't their fault I wasn't getting the post.
• I replied again, but this time I challenged the charge, asking for a breakdown of the £65

Mar 12

• Council wrote back saying £3 was for court charge and £62 for administration.
• Immediately I challenged the £62, requesting a full breakdown of the charge
• They didn't like this and tried to fob me off.
• My response within an email was "Please can you give me a specific breakdown of this £62 authority summons cost,
  with a value next to each item. If it has been approved by the audit commission then you should have no problem producing it."

Apr 12

• Council suprisingly wrote back and said that I had made a request and it was being acted on under the freedom of information act.
• I had a few update emails, telling me information was on way.

May 12

• A phone call out of the blue from a member of the council telling me that the infomation I had requested was on the way and that the £65 was going to be refunded - huzaar!
• Received email, but still no infomation regarding the breakdown, just another guarantee that the Audit Commission has agreed with it.

Jun 12

• Considering requesting that the information be provided, as so far it hasn't and they are very clearly not happy about sharing it.

Summary: It takes a little time and you have to write well and stick by your guns, but you can get the charge back.


Good luck

CIS

as I used the resources here when I first learnt of my penalty.

Its not a penalty, its court costs - a different thing altogether.

CIS

received summons for late payment of council tax (late by 15 days), penalty of £65

The question regarding the court action rests on how and when documents were served.

snorebits

CIS wrote: »

Its not a penalty, its court costs - a different thing altogether.

Wow, good to see you are hot on semantics.Although I wouldn't expect anything less from someone that works in Council tax recovery.

As far as I am concerned it is a penalty. If you had read my post then you will have learned that the court charges where actually £3, whereas the total was £65. The rest of the charge was made up of what could be loosely described as administration charges. In my eyes that is not disimilar to a penalty.