Birmingham City Council is Psychotic

By stef | Published: February 25, 2008

Brazil

Today I was issued a “Liability Order” by the Birmingham Magistrates’ Court for ‘not paying’ my Council Tax.

Sounds cut and dry, right?

If you don’t pay your tax then don’t start ‘boo hoo’ing about getting fines and such.

The thing is that last month I paid about £850 in council tax…

There’s a brief history to this A few years ago I lived in a flat in Moseley, which I still own, but is empty at the moment – there’s nobody living there. I’ve been paying my council tax on that in the mean time, whilst moving to a new place in summer last year. At that point I wrote to them (yes – a phone call or email apparently doesn’t suffice) and they set me up as ‘exempt’ on the old place for six months. The plan was to do it up and sell it. Suffice to say I got busy, as always and my plans went out of the window.

Mean time I missed some correspondence about my exemption ending because it went to the old address. The thing is that mean-time I’ve been in touch with them about my new place, set up regular payments by direct debit for it and everything was going swimmingly, or so I thought. Then out of the blue I get a court summons saying that I have to be at X court at Y date, blah blah blah.

‘Huh?! What’s all this about then?‘ was my response and picked up the phone to the Council Tax department where I’m told that there’s an outstanding balance on my old property. So why isn’t that just included in my direct debit?

“It doesn’t work that way” is the response. So having already paid a bunch of cash to them that month (and still hurting from the Christmas bill!) I paid them a couple of hundred quid and added the remainder to my direct debit.

Done and dusted right? I’ve paid, it’s all good, everyone’s happy, the court thing will be cancelled, right? Nope. For some bizarre reason I received my “Liability Order”.

The letter I received (my emphasis)�

Dear MR STEFAN LEWANDOWSKI (nice mail-merge guys)

A Liability Order has been granted by the Magistrates’ Court for £323.48 of which the following remains outstanding.

Council Tax Arrears subject to this order £323.48

Amount of Council Tax £270.48

Costs incurred to date £53.00

Liability Order made for £323.48

Amount of Arrears now remaining due £238.48

Unless you have done so recently, you now have 7 days to either pay the amount in full or make a suitable offer of payment. At this stage, any new offer of payment will only be considered if you have not previously defaulted on an arrangement in respect of this debt and you complete the Income and Expenditure form overleaf in full (including details of your employer(s)).

Failure to adhere to the above will result in the Council’s Bailiffs being instructed to collect this debt after a further period of seven days has elapsed. This action will cause extra costs and fees to be added to your debt (as shown on the enclosed information sheet) and may result in your goods being taken and sold at auction.

Please note that should you fail to pay the amount outstanding to the Council’s Bailiffs (including their costs), a further application may be made to commit you to prison.

Yours sincerely.

(Incomprehensible signature – Gail Adams?)

Assistant Director (Revenues and Payments)

Wow!

So let me get this straight? I’ve just paid you £850 for council tax. You have a couple of hundred that’s still outstanding and I’ve set up a direct debit on the phone with you. Mean time you’ve actually taken this to a Magistrate’s court, charged me £50 and are now threatening me with visits from the bailiffs and prison? For a couple of hundred quid?!

Tuttle -> Buttle

At this point I started getting images of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil flashing through my head, where a spelling mistake by an official in some faceless bureaucratic government department leads to a Mr. Buttle (a nobody) being mistaken for a Mr. Tuttle (a terrorist) because of a spelling mistake, and his life being systematically destroyed in a very humorous way.

Just to reiterate – Birmingham City Council have sent me a letter saying that if I don’t pay what I’ve already told them I’m paying having given them my account details for a direct debit that they are going to try to send me to prison.

Putting this in context

For the last few years I’ve been donating my time on various things to try to push forward the image of this city as a good place to live and work. This year I was invited to be part of something called the “Big City Plan – City Team”, which is a group of volunteers the council have brought on board to help them inform the future of the city for the next 15 or so years.

I’ve already been throwing ideas into the pot, spending time getting other people connected as well as putting aside 2 whole days before Christmas to attend a conference. Free of charge. Nothing billed.

And on Thursday there’s the launch of what looks set to be an interesting document about what the future holds for Birmingham. I’ve even given up my time for photo-calls of ‘usual suspects’ to help promote it because I think it could be an impactful piece of work.

But a few days in advance of that, after the ‘happy happy, let’s all have a hug’ stuff that’s been going on, I’m basically sent an offensive and threatening letter from the same organisation.

The result – I can ignore the letter

So, I picked up the phone this morning and gave them a call. Apparently this is an ‘automated‘ letter, and just the fact that I’ve set up a direct debit instead of paying £1200 to them two weeks after Christmas meant that the court proceedings went through anyway. That’s completely contradictory to what I was told on the phone, and although this doesn’t appear on any external records or affect my credit rating I just think the whole thing is really insulting, stupid and bureaucratically inept.

Apparently it’s a letter that I can entirely ignore – why they choose to send it is a complete mystery to me.

The Psychotic organisation

From my point of view, the council as an organisation isn’t too far away from the ‘psychotic’ corporation as I read about in the book The Corporation. On one hand it acts all lovely and happy when it wants to, on the other, or rather ‘in’ the other it has a baseball bat.

A user-centric design

If I had anything to do with the ‘Revenues and Payments’ department I’d be doing a review on how they communicate to their customers. I mean – if this is the way that the council deals with people don’t you think you’ll just end up with people hating your organisation? I’m reserving judgement because I know that there are some good things going on with the people I come into contact with, but for Pete’s sake, this doesn’t do anything to build civic pride – and isn’t that the thing we’ve all realised is missing in Birmingham? A bit of ’swagger’?

So – I suggest the council does a top-to-bottom review of how it connects with people at all points. Start being reasonable. Stop sending threatening automated letters. Stop stressing people out unnecessarily. Stop being so heavy handed. Start thinking from a user’s point of view.

What about people who don’t have English as a first language?

I’ve had no end of trouble with this, and if I put myself in the shoes of someone who doesn’t have English as their first language or maybe has literacy issues, the letter above could be pretty distressing. Prison, bailiffs, taking my possessions?!

Nobody has the right to use these kinds of scare tactics on anyone – least of all our own City Council – aren’t they there to act for our interests? Why is it the preserve of the public sector that it can act in this kind of belligerent way? If I acted like this I’d have no clients in pretty much no time.

Switching provider?

With any other situation with, say, a utility company acting in this manner I’d be able to raise my objections with the threat of moving to a different provider. Unfortunately Birmingham City Council have a monopoly on ‘living in Birmingham’ so I don’t have an option. Or maybe I do.

To be honest I’m fed up with this and a load of other issues affecting our city – poor levels of design and new architecture, tired, unadventurous leadership, just a lack of ambition in a lot of areas, and today I really am quite seriously considering leaving.

I’ve had loads of offers over the last few years to go and work and do projects elsewhere in the world.

This is just another example of a big ‘fingers up’ that makes me think I should just head for greener pastures. I know plenty of people in the Creative/Cultural scene who are generally unhappy with various things that are going on in the city right now who are also considering their positions given that our contribution goes mostly unnoticed and under-valued.

If you’re in the revenues and payments department (maybe you’re Gail Adams?) reading this and you want this as a letter so you can ‘process it’, press the print button, put it in an envelope, put your address on it with a stamp and send it to yourself.

What do you think? Should I be ’switching provider’?

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  • Si
    Good read. I've just had a very threatening phone call with the council. I've been told I owe money on an address I don't and haven't lived at for around 6 years. I've been given 28 days to prove I moved out when I say I did or "see you in court"

    What gives them the right to be so aggressive? When you don't pay a phone bill for whatever reason for a while at least their letters are polite!

    Did you move in the end?
  • catherinereaney
    I wonder how many other victims of Birmingham City Council are out there! Maybe we should all set up a pressure group! I know someone who is in the process of purchasing his council flat - if you can call it that - the downstairs part of a small semi-detached house actually. Anyway, Birmingham City Council were granted planning permission (!), but FAILED to re-apply after the deadline. Also, they FAILED to apply for Building Regulations, which they were obliged to do because the 'conversion' involved building an extension (which they call the 'bedroom') on the back. Well, the conveyancing solicitor urged the buyer to arrange for a Birmingham City Building Control Officer to check the CON-version and give written approval for it to prevent problems selling it in the future. Every department I have called on his behalf 'don't deal with that side of things' - including the Building Regulations department! Any ideas anyone?
  • noddy
    well well well i hate the council let me say housing benefit people suck
    they should be in a mental hospital and thats for sure
    i must tell you there making me and my partner pay full rent
    but guess what we are both on incapacity benefit and the reason for this is frank the benefit officer
    thinks we are on three hundred pound a week well we ant we have been trying for help for 5 months
    with no end in sight i will say this i hate the council tax dept as they are rude and bloody mental
    they train them in the rubber room if theycant read speak and have been on holiday in jail you get the job
    thats why they get pissed off if you talk english best to say you like jail then they think your a friend of theres
    well i feel there all fucked up in the head if your frank at benefits reading this get real ass hole
  • Know how you feel.

    Even as a business, the City Council have pretty much made our lives a misery. I am getting prettu sick of the UK, and wouldn't mind geting out of here in the next few years.
  • Jean-Luc Fournier
    Jez is right - a council isn't just one amorphous blob where everyone knows what everyone else is doing, but a big organisation comprising several different departments and thousands of members of staff. Some departments and staff are better than others, and this will vary from council to council. My local council in London is quite good at cleaning streets and maintaining parks, but a bit rubbish at urban regeneration.


    However, I'd say that council tax departments are universally crap all over the country, and your experience is very, very far from unique. I really don't think this issue merits moving city over it.


    It's very easy, especially when living in Birmingham, to imagine the grass is greener on the other side. But most of the things Birmingham gets dissed for exist in all British cities. Want crap, bland, uninspiring new architecture? With samey chainstores and branches of sanitised Starbucks, Pret and Tesco Metro on every street corner? Not Birmingham but London. Le sigh.
  • In July last year, I decided to move from Nottingham, where my council tax had been payable to the City council, to the Nottingham suburb of Woodthorpe, which is administered by Gedling Borough Council.

    I moved into my new flat on July 20 but had picked up the keys and begun moving my belongings a few weeks earlier. I then had a Council Tax demand from Gedling dated July 6.

    When I pointed out that I would only accept liability with effect from July 20, a Gedling official wrote to me and claimed that he had made enquiries to Nottingham City Council and they had told them that I had vacated my previous address on July 5 and must therefore have moved to my Woodthorpe address the following day.

    Of course, even if I had moved out on July 5, it did not necessarily mean that I moved in to my new home the following day. I could for example, have taken a holiday or stayed with friends.

    But I was of course puzzled, so I rang Nottingham City Council had asked them why they had told Gedling that I had vacated my previous flat on July 5. They told me that they had done nothing of the sort, but that Gedling had in fact telephoned them and given them this date!

    Having caught the Gedling official out in a deliberate lie, I asked the guy at Nottingham City Council if he would be willing to confirm this in writing. He said he would.

    I then wrote formally to Nottingham City Council to request this information. I got back a completely evasive and irrelevant answer.

    Not to be put off, I wrote again. This time I received a reply from Nottingham saying that they did not know where the July 5 date had come from (despite having told me that it had come from Gedling).

    I complained to Nottingham's legal department. This time, they replied and said their investigation showed that it was I who had given them the date of July 5 (though this does not explain how the letter I wrote to Nottingham City Council advising them that I had moved came to be dated July 20, the date I actually moved). Also, the person who had previously confirmed that the information had come to them from Gedling claims to have no recollection of anything and was only a temporary member of staff who had since left!

    Local authorities have a right to exchange information about Council Tax payers but not to falsify a person's records. I have complained to the Local Government Ombudsman but do not hold out much hope that these liars will be brought to book. There is a lot of media coverage about benefits fraud but what about local authorities that try to make fraudulent claims?

    In a separate Council Tax matter, a friend of mine, a 65 year old French lady, applied to Nottingham City Council in May last year for Housing and Council Tax benefit after her employer's business closed down and she became unemployed. At the end of June, her application was refused. She appealed. Nottingham said that they would contact her further.

    Nottingham refused her appeal and eventually notified at her previous address by which time she had however been evicted. On August 29, a new tenant moved into the flat and on September 3 the council sent her a final demand for Council Tax. They sent it to her former address even though they new she no longer lived there.

    She knew nothing about the rejection of her appeal or that Nottingham now expected her to pay their Council Tax. In November, the Council issued a summons. However, they had no difficulty at all in serving this at the address to which she had since moved. The law requires local authorities to send out a final notice before issuing a summons. Had she received such a notice, she would have asked about her appeal against the refusal of her application for benefits.

    I immediately contacted Nottingham City Council on my friend's behalf, as soon as she received the summons. They ignored my letter so on the day before the hearing I called them. They agreed to adjourn the case whilst they took a fresh look into her circumstances. But the following day, they went to court and got a liability order. They served it two months later, threatening her with a visit from a bailiff.

    I contacted Nottingham City Council again and they agreed to accept a payment of the Council Tax and to have the liability order set aside. I sent them a cheque and then asked them to confirm to the court their agreement to have the liability order set aside. They agreed to waive the costs but refused to have the liability order set aside and I therefore asked for my cheque back. Initially, they refused to return the cheque but after much argument they eventually did.

    My friend now has to instruct a solicitor to go to court next month to have the liability order set aside (even though the order was obtained in the first place in her absence).

    Why does a magistrates court have jurisidiction in these cases? Debt is not a crime. A magistrate has no power to issue an arrest warrant for failure to attend the hearing of a summons for non-payment of Council Tax (even though they can commit someone to prison for wilful failure to pay Council Tax when ordered to pay and where a person obviously has the means to pay).

    And why do privatised utility companies still have the power to apply for warrants to forcible enter people's properties?

    What also annoys is that unqualified officials can apply for these orders and lay magistrates have the power to grant them, but a person against whom such an order is made is bound to employ a solicitor or barrister to represent them (unless they are able to represent themselves). A lay person cannot do so. It seems somewhat one sided to me.

    Once these liability orders are made, it can cost thousands to have them set aside so that the only realistic option seems to be to pay up and bear it. But why do we have to put up with this kind of extortion?
  • dp
    I've now got my own small contribution to examples of such behaviour. Today my post contained a bill for £27 whose 'payment should be made by the 12 March 2008 to avoid further action'.

    I don't know which is more likely: that it was lost in post for at least 3 days, or that the Council are backlogged, or just not paying attention.

    I wonder what they'll say when I call on Monday.
  • un-fucking-believable. I'm going to watch my tax statements like a HAWK... When I start paying them, that is (yes, I'm a uni student, so you're all paying my council tax for me!)


    I'm not helping my case here.


    I feel your pain man, I've been royally screwed about by Revenue & Customs every year for three years in a row - I still don't have a correct P45, and that was from August last year. The fight goes on...
  • @Jez - ah, my mistake. Well done her! It certainly brightens things up around here - I live in Moseley and what I like best about it is the view out of my window of trees, trees and more trees.

    Now there's something to aim for - pulling Birmingham up the 'trees per capita' ranking... http://www.treesforlondon.org.uk/html/informati...
  • Jez
    I did wonder if my meaning was clear, but I said "works with" rather that "works for", but it isn't paid. In fact, I sometimes think that not only is it not appreciated, it's actively annoying to some parts of the council. She runs Moseley in Bloom, which is (surprisingly) Moseley's Britain in Bloom entry, and has been instrumental in a number of local initiatives, most notably getting new trees planted.

    I'm not remotely suggesting, btw, that the work you've been doing isn't needed or valuable. Christ knows, the BCC website needs a damn good kick in the pants ...
  • @dave hart - the recycling situation in birmingham is, where it happens, actually even better than you paint it as far as the householder is concerned, inasmuch as the householder has to do minimal effort, only needing to put the paper & cardboard into one box & gets to put the glass, tins, & plastic all together in the other box rather than having to sort everything painstakingly. what brings birmingham down is the fact that the recycling collections across the city are somewhat patchy rather than being citywide.

    i can't remember the precise figure (& i can't find the quote from the person who quoted it), but the energy-from-waste statistic is phenomenally good - it's something like 80% (maybe more) of all household waste which *can* be burnt (& not recycled) at tyseley is burnt.
  • @Jez - Yeah, I'm aware of the 'special pleading' issue, so I had someone read this through before I posted it. I'm not saying 'give me money off because of blah blah blah' - what I mean is that I could legitimately send them a bill for my day rate for the time I've spent. I know others do. And being treated like this just makes me want to start sending invoices for every bit of helpful advice I give out.

    Your wife is getting paid for her time - getting advice from a web guy is pretty valuable too.

    But yeah - sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

    @all on the printing issue. Does anyone actually have the time to give up their lunch break to go to a postoffice and use one of those payment book things? It's very odd - I've never paid much attention to them and yet have had a stack of them too.

    I think this all comes down to what Simon said - threaten first and work out the problem later.

    Anyone who operates like that is a bully in my book.

    Threatening _after_ the issue has been solved, well that's just idiocy.
  • Simon Felton
    Sadly i'm another victim of the threaten first and then work out the problem after much panicking and screaming later behaviour by the council.

    When I received my letter it was the first time I had been threatened with the courts and im surprised I didn't lose weight with the worry. If English isn't your first language im sure you could have a mild fit.

    Also had the same problem of different council tax books with subtle changes of information. What a waste of money for printing and administration.

    on the nugget of good news you mentioned Stef, what document is launching on thursday?
  • Jez
    The things you list under "Putting in context" smacks slightly of special pleading - "don't they know what I do for this city?". Because you're well known to one part of the council, it doesn't follow that you should be known to another. Even it did, given that the council tax people already to appear to have cocked it up, what difference should it make? My wife regularly works with the parks department, and despite what I might wish, that doesn't mean the pavement outside my house gets special treatment from the local beat sweeper.

    The real context is elsewhere, in the missing correspondence. It seems very strange to me that mail about an exempt property should be sent to that property since it is, by definition, empty. I also agree that the process, such as it appears to be, is broken.

    All large organisations act in this apparently capricious manner. They're too large, too disparate, too rambling to do otherwise. Being sent erroneously a council tax summons doesn't mean that your efforts elsewhere aren't appreciated, it simply means you've been erroneously sent a council tax summons. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar :)
  • Sorry to hear about your problems Stef. I fall into the never-had-a-problem category but then I've done nothing more than move from house to house over the last few years, something that's no doubt simple to track. Brum's the largest city council in Europe but clearly lacks the infrastructure to match in some quarters.

    Just wanted to respond to OrangeJon's comments which seem unduly negative:

    Green corridors - there's a wonderful peaceful canal running from Selly Oak through to the city centre and out to the Rea Valley cycle route and the Lickey Hills. You're also only down the road from Bournville where there's a ton of Green space. I won't even start on the other bits of Brum (Sutton Park, one of the largest public park in Europe).

    Recyling - the council collect paper, glass and plastic from the doorstep. We have a waste to energy facility in Tyseley powering 20,000 homes. We're on our way I think after years of being crap at it.

    Public transport - you're in Selly Oak, you're on a train route less than 15 minutes from the city centre, they come every 10 minutes and there's loads of buses on the Bristol Road.

    Community - you've got a large student community in Selly Oak that may well change and shift too much to develop a sense of community. But Northfield just south of you and Longbridge have strong working class communities as do many other areas of Brum.

    Let's try to avoid too much Brum-bashing on this one.

    Dave
  • Is there a "comparison shopping" reviews site for cities? I'm pretty footloose and not massively impressed with Birmingham in general (even if, because I'm a student I've not had the pleasure of being hounded for council tax). The main things I care about (recycling, public transport, green corridors, community) are pretty poor, at least in Selly Oak.
  • Wow! I had no idea that so many people would come back saying they'd had similar.

    Okay - has anyone _not_ been threatened in a similar way by Birmingham City Council? We might be getting to the root of a problem here.
  • I remember in the mid-90s living in a shared mixed-status house in the Sandwell council area; for that whole three years we went through a six-weekly cycle of bill (which was incorrect, missing the mixed-status of the occupants), reminder, final demand, summons. Each time I phoned them up explaining what the problem was & what they could do to fix it, with the person on the other end of the phone saying to ignore the letter and they'd send out a new, corrected bill. This went on for three years, until eventually we discovered that due to the nature of the tenancy agreement the landlord was liable all along anyway!

    (You can of course switch to a new provider of living in Birmingham by moving on to a boat - I did!)
  • I can't say that i've had anywhere near the level of problems that you and others have experienced, but having recently moved and changed the way I pay my Council Tax, I am now the proud owner of 6 Council Tax payment books, each covering the first half of 2008, and each with a slightly amended piece of information on it. I wouldn't mind, but I pay by Direct Debit, so this book is totally irrelevant to me. Each one comes with a nice thick wad of leaflets detailing exactly what they spend my money on (not including printing costs for Council Tax books). I've phoned to tell them to stop sending them because it's a waste of money. I was told they had to send them to me, "it's automatic"...
  • Accounting systems are hard problems and I'm not sure councils can afford the expertise or time to solve them successfully. Automated billing is fine as long as everything operates in intervals measured in weeks but they fail miserably as soon as the granularity increases. I'm sure they were all fine when people posted cheques but phone and internet banking have increased the speed of the game.

    What they could do is accept that their system is flawed and use their personnel as a second line of defense. It sounds like the folk you spoke to were a touch clueless or powerless, sadly.

    I managed to overpay my building maintenance fees three times last year thanks to the company's automated system firing their bills 2 days before they updated their accounts to include direct bank transfers. Bills go out on the 1st, online accounts are done on the 3rd. Every time. That's just how the schedule works. Since I always pay direct online I get two bills every quarter: one saying I'm late paying my bill and I had to "sort it out or else"; the next with a polite apology.
  • Manchester are just as bad - thing is, when you owe them money they're all over you, they owe me about £500 now and it hasn't been paid after 4 months... and what the fuck can I do about it? Nothing.
  • Totally sympathise with you mate. It's funny how they get all threatening when you owe them money but when the boot's on the other foot they tend to have a head in the sand approach.
    We've just had our business rates reviewed at both pubs (by an independant company, not the council). And guess what? We've been over-charged by 25%. And when do we get our rates rebate? Not for 3 months if we accept the initial estimate of 25%, but a whopping 12-16 months if we go to appeal. Seems like the money chasing department has a few more eager beavers than the repayment department. Oh well, at least we'll get another pointless council-funded "festival" to keep us all distracted.
    Fight The Power!
  • I had almost exactly the same thing last year Stef - liability letter, bailiff's order, court summons, the works - also for a couple of hundred quid.

    But the best bit in my case was, there weren't even any complications at my end: I didn't owe anything. I'd actually paid every single installment up to 3 weeks EARLY each time.

    It was only after sending them photocopies of my bank statements with the payments clearly marked with a highlighter that they admitted they'd 'lost' the payments, and had been experiencing some 'problems with their online banking.'

    No warning, so earlier letters, just the court summons. So yes, I share both your pain and your vitriol ;)
  • Council are wankers.

    Like you Stef, I have also had offers to greener pastures which I am considering at the moment.

    There are better cities our there, better countries even.

    Countries where your not paying for a war in Iraq from your wages!
  • Tax collecting bodies seriously need better tighter regulating and should most definitely provide a better "user experience" (especially in terms of support). Every month I get a letter from the tax man telling me I've not paid my PAYE. So I ring up and explain I don't pay PAYE and they tell me to "simply discard the letter". The guess what happens next month... I get the same letter!!!

    Even this guy could do better
  • Glad to hear it's not just me, but is that a bad or a good thing...?
  • Stef, you are not alone in receiving this kind of treatment. It's strange to me that in this day and age those who give of their time and experience always seem to get hurt by some unrelated backlash. I am not sure that moving away from Birmingham will do any good, at least not within the frontiers of the UK.
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