‘I missed a £100 council tax bill while in hospital – the debt ballooned to £6k’
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn43439n4xxo
Posted by Bbrhuft
‘I missed a £100 council tax bill while in hospital – the debt ballooned to £6k’
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn43439n4xxo
Posted by Bbrhuft
16 Comments
Following a motorbike accident that left Mr Barley seriously injured and in hospital for a month and unable to work, he missed a £101.71 council tax bill, triggering a demand for the year’s full payment upfront (about £1,000). Out of work and on £90 per week sick pay, bailiff fees (about £700) and enforcement charges quickly spiralled to around £6,000. His relationship broke down and his house was repossessed. He has since paid off most of the bill, but still owes about £1,700, including bailiff fees.
So he got just two letters (the original and reminder) for the standard amount, which he saw *after* he left the hospital, and rang them up to say he couldn’t pay? He didn’t “miss” them, he saw them and then for whatever reason said he couldn’t pay.
As much as council tax collection is predatory and harsh, something doesn’t stack up here.
FWIW – most councils will try for a set amount of time to collect unpaid council tax, then just write it off. Don’t let bailiffs in (if they even turn up, councils don’t have the money to send bailiffs for everyone) and eventually they’ll stop trying. No way to live of course, worrying every time there’s a knock at the door, but it’s perfectly possible.
bro should have gone to prison instead. At least you dont pay Council tax then! We have a really weird system IMO.
This sounds like bollocks.
I’ve missed more than a months council tax before and they didn’t demand an upfront payment from me, in fact IIRC I repaid it before they noticed. And surely no council is going to sick the bailiff on someone for missing a months payment.
Some kind of digital system where your admission to hospital being linked to the issuing of a tax bill sent on the same day would be helpful in avoiding these sorts of situations.
Let’s be honest, it’s not the councils, it whoever controls the council. Our council tax goes direct to hmrc
At the end of my PhD during the write up I was offered a temporary position at the Uni. You get a small amount of money to cover living costs for the PhD but you do not have to pay council tax. Despite this you get letters every year saying that you owe council tax because the University doesn’t update them ever year. I didn’t realise that the temp job made me eligible to pay council tax until about 6 months in. As it turns out the usual tactic of ignoring the councils letters and clarifying the situation later was not an option and i managed to land myself in some ridiculous debt after 12 years of paying my bills on time, also destroying my great credit rating right before getting a decent paying job. Felt like a right plonker.
I have a suspicion theres more to this than missing one payment
It’s expensive to be poor. Rich folk have no idea, nor do they care.
He couldn’t pay? I can’t imagine one missed payment triggered this. Me thinks he and who other lives at the household ignore letters or didn’t engage. ***Edited, see more info was provided by other commenters and also lost the house, so I guess he was also dependant on the partner income but still, if relationships breakdown most sensible people would sell it over repossession. So lots missed in the story.
Bollocks. Geezer just probably thought was getting away with it
We had a council call in debt collectors for adebt we didn’t even know existed. They don’t try very hard to get hold of you.
I experienced how quickly things can escalate myself recently. I moved into a new house so hadn’t yet set up a direct debit, and was a week late paying the first amount. The next month I again paid manually or so I thought, somehow it didn’t go through on the online system. The next thing I know is this month I receive a county court summons for non payment requesting the full year payment with additonal fees added, and the court date was only 3 weeks ahead. If I was away for whatever reason I would have never known and it would have continued to spiral most likely as it got passed to collection agency etc
We are not being told the whole story – not his fault – it is the BBC that should be ashamed at poor journalism.
*But after he missed a payment reminder letter while in hospital, his debts rocketed out of control. Mr Barley, 26, from Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, had a “well-paid” job as a software developer, and owned his own home, but the accident in March 2021 put him in hospital for a month.*
*The same day as the accident, Mr Barley was sent a council tax bill for an instalment of £101.71. He missed the payment and was still in hospital when a reminder letter was sent to his home, so he missed that, too.*
*He says after telling his local council he would not be able to pay, they sent another letter, in June 2021, setting out a payment plan. It included two months of reduced payments but then demanded Mr Barley pay the rest of the year’s payments in advance – a total of about £1,000.*
‘Well paid job’ but doesn’t seem to have any savings
Doesn’t pay council tax by DD – gets monthly bill?? Most people pay via DD and some get their bills yearly by email/online.
3 months after accident had a payment plan, then another 2 months of reduced payments…which gave him time to sort his finances out – claim other benefits, restart work or get advice on setting up a debt management plan.
[After those 5 months] *After further reminder letters and warnings, Mr Barley’s case was passed to bailiffs, who sent a “threatening letter” telling him they would be coming over to seize and sell his belongings to help pay off his debt.*
More time – still no mention of getting debt advice from CAB, StepChange etc – after what is likely 6-12 months after the accident.
*He fell behind on his mortgage and other payments too. He managed to get a credit card cleared, but his home was eventually repossessed, and he said he had such little money to spend on food that his meals consisted of bread smeared with ketchup.*
It seems he was already on the financial edge – newish mortgage, credit card debt, and possibly behind with council tax (why else are they sending monthly bills). Has an accident, doesn’t have accident insurance / income replacement, no mention of getting debt or benefits help, assume not working, after 6 months or so creditors start to get serious about debt collection. I believe most debt charities would have advised he focus on mortgage and council tax and would have asked the credit card company to freeze the debt – he seems to have done the exact opposite and paid off the credit card.
For the council debt to rise from £1000 to £6000 with interest and charges must have taken a lot of bailiff letters and visitors given the charges for each quoted – or is that several years council tax as well?
And no mention of when/if he went back to his ‘well paid’ job – what was the point of publishing such limited information?
What surprises me about this article is he mentioned he had a well paid job, but there’s no mention of savings or insurances or any emergency fund to cushion unexpected blows like this. Also kinda wild that his workplace only offers SSP.
Yes let’s all do nothing about these predatory practices