Help needed with Council Tax arrears

beee_2

We are having problems with our Council Tax, and I was wondering if anyone could offer advice.

We had some arrears, which we were paying off as a bit extra each month with our normal monthly payment. My husband dealt with it all, and I assumed he was making the monthly payments. Then last year, the company he worked for closed down. My husband became quite depressed, and unfortunately some bills went unpaid. One of these was the Council Tax. I knew nothing about it until we got a letter through the door from Equita, saying that unless they received payment, they would come and remove goods from the property.

My husband and I talked, and he confessed how bad things had become. He rang Equita, and was told that the minimum they would accept as payment was £150 per month, and would not budge on the amount. My husband panicked and paid £150 on his debit card, which left us short that month. When we got the new Council Tax bill a couple of weeks ago, it said we owed £860 arrears, and it was subject to court proceedings.

I telephoned the council, partly because I decided to take over the payments myself (as much as I love my husband, I'm wary about trusting him to pay it). I explained what had happened, how the bailiff had virtually bullied my husband into making a payment we couldn't afford, and how we'd had no acknowledgement or receipt for that payment. I told her that I would like to take over the payment, and proposed paying an extra amount on top of our new monthly bill. At first, she just kept saying "once it's gone to the bailiffs, there's nothing we can do". Eventually, she transferred me to someone else, I think in the collections department.

This time, I was told that they could "try and get the debt back from the bailiffs" but they'd have to put an arrangement on our account. She wanted all sorts of details about my husband's employment, and said that if the arrangement went on, they'd accept a minimum of £80 per month, and any missed payments meant that the debt would come out of my husband's wages at a rate of 17% a month.

At this stage, I'm wondering what my options are - £80 is still a lot, but I think we could do it at a push. The way it's been presented to me by the council, it's either that, or fight it out with the bailiffs. The problem is, I worry about the implication of this going on my husband's employment record.

Thank you for reading all this - any thoughts much appreciated