I posted in detail about how on moving I muddled my Council Tax and was astonished at the speed with which Edinburgh City Council set the bailiffs upon me. Through my local MP I have now received clarification that Edinburgh City Council take people to court as soon as their payment is 42 days late.
I find that absolutely incredible. People are human, they make mistakes, they may be temporarily short of cash. I cannot think of any other body that is so aggressive in subjecting people to the judicial system for a small delay. No commercial company would dream of taking people to court for just being 42 days late, the utility companies and banks would in fact not to be allowed to do so by regulators and the inland revenue certainly are much less predatory.
Do not misunderstand me. People should pay their tax, on time. I tried to pay mine 46 days late for which I apologise and am happy to accept a late payment penalty. But I can think of absolutely no reason why it was necessary to take me to court for paying my Council Tax in May instead of April.
Actually I can think of one reason – to make enormous money for Scott & Co, the bailiffs. I tried to pay by online direct debit on 25 May, not knowing that on 19 May Edinburgh Council had already referred me to court. My payment appeared accepted and I got a confirmation number from Edinburgh City Council. Three days later, on 28 May, they obtained a court warrant against me. Edinburgh City Council have not taken any payment from my direct debit and they refuse to take any payment from my direct debit. They both refuse to take the payment and at the same time continue to harass me for non-payment.
The reason is they have no interest in collecting my tax. What they want is to make money for Scott & Co., a private company owned by an extremely wealthy husband and wife partnership. I cannot now pay Edinburgh City Council but have to make the payment to this private company including their exorbitant fees.
I have no objection to paying any late penalty to Edinburgh City Council, but when any City Council in Scotland is primarily interested in channeling money to a private company and making millionaire parasites richer, then I look at the size of the houses and value of the cars of councillors, ex-councillors, and senior officials and I ponder, deeply.
I’m definitely not going to swear, this time. But I want to. The reason we have alternative money-making rackets for the favoured is because central government caps local authorities, centralises the big taxation (the burden of which falls on those less able to pay) while bankers’ bonuses are a must. I am a socialist. This sick, abysmally sick, country in which I live needs to realise why nationalisation rather than privatisation is the only way forward.
@Villager – “Leonard, someone made very similar points about the kangaroo ‘courts’ when Craig first raised the issue. Perhaps it was you? Unbelievable in this day and age — absolutely shocking!”
It wasn’t me, but I agree it is shocking that councils blatantly set up these pseudo courts. They hire a room within the court building and proceed with officials who have no legal status. This is of course scandalous, all the more so because the vast majority of late payers (for whatever reason) have no idea that they are sitting in a mock court.
Even worse is the fact that the magistrate court officials not only turn a blind eye to this travesty of due process but actually rent these rooms out knowing perfectly they have no proper legal basis.
On the subject of costs, almost all bailiff/debt collectors letters are mass printed and posted for less than £3 per threatening letter, so the profit margin is enormous. Unfortunately it takes an articulate and aware defendant to assertively point out to a magistrate that typical costs claimed (£80-£200) are way in excess of proper costs. My concern is for those who are perhaps less articulate and who are feeling extremely vulnerable and therefore cough up through fear.
Added to this is the threat of credit referencing agencies which also act without due process on the word of debt collectors or councils CCJs might have been issued or threatened. That’s another huge subject which ought to be addressed.
The whole business of council tax debt is riven with very likely breaches of harassment and debt laws which conflict with accepted procedures that are a travesty of due process. In particular council tax legislation is only concerned with recovering tax debt, not with promoting bailiffs fees. The fact that councils offload their own admin to absolutely ghastly debt collectors and shady lawyers is shocking indeed.
It is also highly likely that courts, or pseudo-courts, act in a manner which diametrically opposes the long established premise that debt is not a crime. The Local Government Finance Act 1992 does not criminalise non payment except in cases where tax is withheld willfully. An honest mistake or 40 days late could not possibly be described as “willful”. Therefore any attempt to recover extra fees by bailiffs could be seen as harassment and a criminal offense unless such fees were very much lower than they are currently levied.
The key to all this is to make clear to both the council and their hideous henchmen that any attempt to harass outside of due process IS a criminal offense, and at the very least has no validity in law.
Back to CEC!
There is a public building in southern Edinburgh, built with private money. It clearly does not meet building regulations and yet occupancy was permitted by CEC employees.
One does indeed wonder about the potential for corruption…but this is CEC we are talking about, which gave us the statutory notice scandal, the property maintenance contracts scandal and that overpriced tramline!
Leonard Young, thanks for your excellent posts. I’m stunned to think that the ‘Summons’ I received for a simple late payment (after having paid the entire amount in full on time every year for the previous seven years) may have been a ruse like you describe. I wish I’d kept the letter. For the average Joe receiving a court Summons can be pretty traumatic, it’s outrageous that the Council would do such a thing. Maybe I’m naive. Thanks for opening my eyes.
” I am a socialist. This sick, abysmally sick, country in which I live needs to realise why nationalisation rather than privatisation is the only way forward.”
Since when has it been socialist to believe in the nationalisation of local debt collection services – I somehow doubt that Craig wishes to see collection of local taxes transferred to a national level – even if that nation is Scotland. One of the reason for the failure of the state socialism of the USSR was the centralising tendency that you and other “socialist” tyrants favour so much.
[ Mod: Thanks for the comments, but please keep posts on-topic, particularly for the first page or so on the most current thread ]
Earlier RoS used the acronym ALEO which I had not heard of before. I found it on here – Glasgow City Council’s Governance Arrangements. It is ‘Arm’s length external organisation’.
In these bailiffs’ case, not so much ‘arm’s length’ but ‘we’ll have your arm and a leg, thanks’.
~~~
PS Not falling for the attempt above to divert the conversation! I note the great concern for what appears on Craig’s blog!
Cheers Frazer. Are you still mine clearing? That calls for bravery.
[ Mod: Thanks for the comments, but please keep posts on-topic, particularly for the first page or so on the most current thread ]
The Scottish government has frozen council tax increases since 2007, told the councils they had to become more efficient. Councils are cutting back on essential services, care homes closed, street lighting, roads, libraries being closed, class sizes increased.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-31415002
Yet they are owed £100 million in unpaid council tax, they seem to have little option than, nay a duty to do all they can to retrieve as much as they can.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-31415002
Of course the SNP knows it won’t be them that take the blame for their populist vote buying policies, the councils, the debt collection agencies will be the scapegoats.
Does a court need to actually sit, for it to be called a ‘court’?
No doubt next year you will have to go through the same rigmarole if you don’t pay on time or in agreed installments. What a racket.
The second link in the post above should have been.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-33147456
“Since when has it been socialist to believe in the nationalisation of local debt collection services . . .”
Nobody mentioned nationalisation in this context. It is the environment that has created a haven for the leeches of society to suck taxpayers’ blood and make the bankers and service-providers rich in the process that needs replacing. The bailiffs seeking to rob an honest citizen exemplifies the sickness of today’s society. Only recently has there been any attempt to legislate against wheel-clampers another racket learnt from the bankers. But the bankers are the main culprit and without a nationalised central bank with meaningful regulations can society move forward.
However I am not surprised a Blairite like yourself wants to protect this ignomony. Not much chance of Jeremy Corbyn getting your vote. 🙂
Correction: “But the bankers are the main culprit and and only with a nationalised central bank with meaningful regulations can society move forward.”
Craig, I notice that Frazer takes you to task albeit gently about forgetting to pay your Council Tax on time and suggests that setting up a direct debit would help. Generally this is a good idea yet even here things can gang agley.
I have an account into which a modest pension is paid and from which some regular DD’s, including my Council Tax are paid. Quite simple really, money goes in and money goes out and as the going in always exceeded the going out all was well and needed only the most perfunctory checking. That was until my friendly bank manager and friend phoned ( I live in a village where this is still possible) to say that I was in danger of going into overdraft. The reason was that no payments in had been made during the past two months.
On phoning to find out why I was given telephone number for Wigan. As I live in the central belt of Scotland I thought this peculiar however I phoned. Several times each to a different person and department until at last I was told that payments had been stopped as I hadn’t replied to their letters. To cut a long story short it appeared that letters dealing with my pension had been sent to an address in St Helens and as I didn’t live there the person who did posted them back.
There then followed days and hours of phone calls during which I was asked why I had left St Helens, when had I moved to St Helens, how long ago had I left, why I hadn’t replied to the letters, why had I not informed them that I had left St Helens and why had I moved to my present location. During all of this I continued to insist that for the previous 22 years I had stayed in the same house in the same village and that the monies had been paid into the same bank during all that time.
Eventually I was given a Glasgow number and when I got through to the appropriate person and explained what was going on she groaned and said ” Oh no not again” and then proceeded to fix the problem, which was, it appeared, the result of a reorganisation in the Department of Pensions.
None of the above will be of any direct help but it may serve as a warning not to take so much on faith and to carry out a more frequent periodic checking procedure of ones finances. Oh yes, and remain friends with your local bank manager.
G H Graham
25 Jun, 2015 – 4:41 pm – Positive and useful post. Some twenty years ago now a bailiff knocked my door for council tax owing to Dover where I had been working during the week and commuting home weekends. I was immediately taken 105 miles to Dover magistrates in a noisy old white van. Not a pleasant experience.
Funny how the courts (real or imaginary) are used to extort funds out of we the people? This is for the benefit of keeping the rest of the plebs in line; making an example of the offenders at huge costs, and mental stress. This is a clear violation of the Human Rights of the individuals who are subject to such a great deal of pressure, for paltry sums and even more risible delays. Ponga (or whatever it is) and the rest of the legal loan sharks don’t stand a look in.
The opaque and murky operational quotient of the local authorities that incidentally have spy powers and are one of the 768 internal spy agencies. Their activities/operations in many aspects are denoted as nontransparent and “prone to corruption” by the Transparency International. But who cares?
These local authorities can get away with their shenanigans and the various “councilors” and officials can be enriched in more than one sense of the word in the process.
These practices of course are not considered corrupt! After all corruption occurs only in Africa and elsewhere in “Daigolands” not in our Septic Isles!
Craig see if you have recourse for appeal and check and see if there are any legal eagles around here who would like to pick up this baton on pro bono basis, to fight your case. If only for the sake of the waifs and strays who are in the same boat as you without any recourse to anyone and effectively being oppressed and coerced into paying out monies that they simply do not have. This is cause for public concern, as it should be a general practice and not an isolated case.
“Funny how the courts (real or imaginary) are used to extort funds out of we the people?”
Not funny at all. It’s a product of Resident Dissident’s ideal society. Don’t get me started on insurance companies. There you’ve done it.
A boy, not eighteen, buys a small motor-cycle to get to work. He does not earn much and takes out an insurance policy he cannot really afford without any cover for fire or theft. This totals £150 a month. His motor-cycle is garaged in his parents’ garage. The garage gets broken into, his motor-cycle is stolen (£1500) and ends up burnt out on a recreation ground. He phones up and cancels his insurance policy, and his parents phone the bank to stop the direct debits. Despite having cancelled his insurance the insurance company sends a threatening letter that if he does not pay £150 they will send the bailiffs to collect it. This is capitalism folks. It stinks.
That’s because he bought a years insurance which he then tried to pay off in monthly instalments. Even after the bike had been written off he still owed the full amount of the premium. He should’ve gone for a Pay As You go policy.
Mark Golding.
It works the other way round in Scotland, or at least it did when we were lumbered with the “Poll Tax” first.
My own battles lasted five years. Only after the Assistant Director of Finance came out to my house with his assistant did I get my money back.
What the Assistant Director of Finance told me was, “we bill you where you keep your stereo”.
I was trying to get my friend off their hook who was working and living in England before the Poll Tax came into being. He was being harassed at his mother’s address, but was not living there. His mother’s address was the last address the Scottish local authority had for him.
Unfortunately his mother paid it just to get peace from the Sheriff’s Officers.
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/jun/26/concentrix-ministry-justice-bailiff-contract-threatened-tax-credit-claimants
Re Craig’s story . The ‘ outsourcing ‘ of contracts to unethical dubious companies like above , seems common whether by local or national Government .
Interesting Robert Crawford; I realise now why my mates stayed in an ‘out of the way’ caravan while silly me hired a crudely furnished bed-sit at an extortionate rent and having to pay two lots of council tax.
Seems not all councils are quite so trigger-happy when it comes to calling in the bailiffs :
http://www.swansea.gov.uk/article/4539/I-have-received-a-court-summons-for-not-paying-my-Council-Tax
For example,
They, at least, don’t appear eager to turn the debt over to bailiffs as a first resort.
From the horse’s mouth:
http://www.counciltaxadvisors.co.uk/scotland/sheriff-advice/Scott-and-co.html
Looks to me as if, if you didn’t get two warnings from ECC, they’re at fault. Whether it would be worth pursuing it would be another matter. (Scott might then seize a tram or two on your behalf if ECC delayed coughing up). Off the top of my head, I don’t see six weeks as grossly unreasonable, though, in the absence of any quick response from you.
Mark Golding; two lots of council tax in the same country? I would be challenging that.
Ba’al Zevul.
My council said this time,” miss the due and you could forfeit the right to pay by instalments”.
correction, that should be “due date”.
Craig we’ll need to get Tommy Sheridan around to your house, if you decide nof to pay the robbing b*stards aka the baliffs.
I recall quite a few years back Sheridan and a large posse of men and women swamping a ladies house,in Mosspark, they packed out ever room with people, and when they came to remove the womans goods for non payment of the unfair Poll Tax, they gave up due to lack of access.
A small victory, but the statement of intent was made clear.
Kempe 26 Jun, 2015 – 1:52 pm
Are you trying to justify what the thieving insurance companies, the most liquid of all companies, do to children? Because it seems like it.
Republicofscotland.
I could have helped Tommy Sheridan with Poll Tax debt.
I know how it is created. In the main it is “false”.
I offered to show this Scottish Government how it is done. They did not want to know!.
It is still being done. You have to prove them wrong. And they are always right, they think.
It takes much letter writing and time and stress.
Then one has to become totally committed to the long haul. They will try to grind you down, with their army of “letter writers”.
When you know you are right, never give in. They will though.
“My council said this time,” miss the due and you could forfeit the right to pay by instalments”.”
____________________-
Your Council would not be alone in taking that line.
Paying Council tax in “x” monthly installments is a facility which Councils (at least most if not all of them) offer to ratepayers and which can be withdrawn in certain circumstances.