Shropshire Council accused of ‘bully-boy’ debt tactics
Friday 22nd April 2011, 11:29AM BST.
Shropshire Council is setting bailiffs on to more than 1,500 council taxpayers and motorists a year to recover unpaid bills and parking fines.
The figures, released by campaign group Big Brother Watch, show bailiffs and debt recovery agencies were called in to collect unpaid council tax bills in 248 cases between 2007/2008 and 2009/ 2010.
And it got the bailiffs and agencies involved to pursue 4,451 drivers for unpaid parking fines during the same period.
It was one of about 320 local authorities to respond to a Freedom of Information request.
Telford & Wrekin Council failed to reply to the request “in either a timely or appropriate manner”, said the campaign group.
The councils which responded to the survey from across England, Scotland and Wales passed on 4.5 million cases for non-payment of council tax and 1.4 million cases for parking infringements.
Daniel Hamilton, director of Big Brother Watch, branded the findings “shocking”, and said sending in bailiffs should always be the “absolute last resort”.
He called on ministers to end “the culture of bully-boy debt collection”.
Local Government and Housing Minister Grant Shapps pledged the Government would “rein in the aggressive use of bailiffs”.
David Sparks, vice chairman of the Local Government Association, said about £530 million of council tax went unpaid last year.
“Councils have a duty to the vast number of residents who pay their taxes to pursue the small number of individuals who don’t,” he said. “There is nothing trivial about collecting money which funds the vital frontline services residents need and want.”
Most Commented
- Shropshire Council will face £8m redundancy bill
- Clampdown on Shrewsbury chuggers
- Bishop's gay marriage views do nothing to support bible teachings
- Letter: Alcohol price plans annoy me
- Planners ordered to stay on Newport visit bus
- Letter: Angered by close encounter of the furred kind
- Letter: No sense in overseas job adverts
Shropshire Star on Twitter
Keep updated with the latest breaking news and content on our Twitter feed.
Lifestyle
Interactive Dining Out map
Hundreds of reviews by the Shropshire Star and Express & Star's teams to help you decide where to eat.
Entertainment
All the film reviews
Before you plan a trip to the pictures, get our critics' verdicts on all the latest movie releases.
OUR NEW APP
Get the new Shropshire Star app
Download the Shropshire Star’s new app to your iPad or iPhone to get one week of access to our digital newspapers absolutely FREE.
shropshirestar.com
Popular sections
Useful links
3 years ago i was late on 3 monthly payments of council tax (around a week late on each payment).
& wrekin council could’nt wait to get bailifs involed which turned a £150 council tax bill into £800+ debt in a matter of 2months.
i was struggling so much that i came close to losing the home i’d lived in for 30+ years (rented from wrekin housing trust) & being in so much debt i had no choice but to apply to the courts for an application order to get bailiffs off my back & be able to feed myself.
wrekin council are disgusting for forcing people already broke into a pit of debt they can never get out of.
respect goes to telford courts for helping me return to a normal healthy lifestyle with lowering my debt repayments to an affordable level.
Report abuse
Whereas it must be awful for people through no fault of their own who find themselves struggling to pay bills they simply do not have the available money to, conversely the local authorities do have a duty to the rest of the population to do what they can to recover outstanding debts. 1,500 unpaid bills is a lot of lost revenue aka even more service cutbacks …
If people have a genuine problem, the answer is not, as too many do, to bury your head in the sand but to make contact at the start of the problem and try and come to some arrangement. Also, don’t stop paying altogether. At least if you pay a small amount you are showing willing, and it’s very, very difficult for the LA to prove otherwise.
There are organisations out there that can help – the CAB for instance are brilliant and will try their best to sort things for you – don’t ignore it until the day the Baliffs knock on your door !!
Report abuse
Hear hear. I too sympathise with people who find themselves unable to pay Council Tax. Regardless of one’s opinion of this tax, the authority does have an obligation to ensure that revenue is collected.
Again poor journalism puts the boot into the Council for a cheap headline. Surely it would be better to report how much additional revenue was collected by following such methods, rather than simply written off for fear of attracting bad publicity. I’m sure the S/Star would be the first to report the authority’s shortcomings in such cases.
Whether Council Tax or parking fines, if you can’t pay, contact the authority and communicate with them.
Report abuse
All very sensible, but you overlook the fact that many debtors need help, not censure. Very few actively seek to avoid their responsibilities, people get into debt for all sorts of reasons, but most find debt a very frightening experience and react by running away from their problems if clumsily confronted – which is sadly, so often the case. Dull witted and stoney faced bureaucracy makes the sort of initial contact with debtors that creates a bigger problem than actually existed and then compounds it by employing much the same tactics as the Sheriff of Nottingham did whilst dressing them up in 21st century garb and gabble. Crass inflexibly and small mindedness make things worse. Local Authorities are a fertile breeding ground for such rigid “solutions”.
Report abuse
Quite right too, as a Credit Controller I can assure people that in debt collection baliffs are called in as a last resort and usually because the debtor has failed to comunicate with the creditor in any way regarding their circumstances. In these instances a debtor has be classed as a ‘won’t pay’ as opposed to a ‘can’t pay’ and urgent action taken to recover the debt.
If you are in trouble always talk to your creditor, in most circumstances they would rather get their money sooner rather than later rather than risk the debt getting bigger and becoming completely unrecoverable. No one likes writing off bad debts and doing so only increases costs to other customers whilst recouping the monies lost.
Report abuse
There is very good local debt help and advice company in Shrewsbury called Integrity Financial Services that can help people. They are really helpful and are family run. They deal with all sorts of debt issues and help people in all situations. I would recommended them definately if you have a problem with this…
Report abuse
Well said. Totally agree, if more people had common sense like this then the baliffs wouldn’t be needed!
In my job, I hear from lots of members of the public who a lot of the time are complaining baliffs are involved, and in 90% of cases it’s because people ignore the issue and let it get to that stage!
Report abuse
Just be wary of the CAB they cannot do half the thingd that professional debt advice companies can and will most often pass you over to high fee charging debt mangement company that will try and put you in one of those IVA things. Bailiffs cannot take court action unless they have a court stamped warrant of execution or entry. Debt collection agents will sometimes pretend to be bailffs. They have no legal powers what so ever and have to leave your property especially if un-invited. If they refuse to leave you can get them removed by the police for a tort of trespass under the law. My advice get professional help and advice do not go to the charities because their funding has been cut and they do not give the right advice.
Report abuse
The CAB offer a free service. Many debt firms charge high fees for IVA’s and debt management plans (likely to be your first months payment plus 20% thereafter. There is absolutely no guarantee that your creditors will stick with a voluntary debt management plan and your main creditor must agree to an IVA. The law states that if the CAB contacts your creditors, they must respond. There is no legal guarantee that your creditorsa will speak to a debt management firm. It appears that those involved with debt management firms are using this forum to push consumers away from getting free advice and help from the CAB, local money shops or trading standards.
Report abuse
You are exactly right. I’ve used a few debt agencies in the past and ALL of them have a disclaimer which points out that creditors are not oblidged to deal/contact them but you only find this out onces you’ve signed up with them. When the debt agencies i was using tried to contact my creditors, they refused point blank to deal with them and would only deal with myself directly.
Yes i sorted my debts out in the end but not via any debt agency because my creditors refused to talk to them which they are legally intitled to do so.
So, from a debtor who has gone via the debt agency route, my advice is don’t because your wasting your time and money.
Report abuse
No matter how bad your debts, there are still plenty of false friends who can profit from your misery. Just call National Debtline 0808 808 4000 which is government supported and offers (really) free, confidential help and advice.
Report abuse
I had trouble with council debt collectors/bailiffs. They walked into my house when I was ill. They tried to take my car on my birthday. They were evil, they kept pursuing me for months.
I was behind on my payments but I was paying them back but was struggling financially after being out of work and accumulating mortgage arrears. I got no sympathy at all. I was treated exactly the same as someone who had never paid and made no effort to pay.
Even now I lock all my windows and doors and dont open the curtains as a result of their tactics and this is 7 years on.
Report abuse
I was always sceptical of people who claimed that bailiffs had been to visit them without any interim stage in between being advised of the debt and them turning up, but just last week, I was called to assist a friend who had a bailiff roaming free in her house making a list of goods to seize and remove for auction to pay off a £300 council tax bill from Telford and Wrekin. His charge for the visit: £450, including £100 for 40 minutes waiting time to enable me to go to a bank and take out the money to pay him off.
What shocks me is that the debt had been caused by Telford and Wrekin failing to adjust their direct demand quickly enough to account for a change in single person status and effectively creating a rolling debt that remained constant. When the matter was finally correctly summarised on a council tax bill, my friend had lost her job and was in dire straits until insurance kicks in in May. She went to the council offices to see if she could come to an arrangement and was told that the matter had been passed to bailiffs for collection and that an arrangement would need to be made with them. However, when contacted, they said that they had no record of the debt being passed over.
Another call to T&W uncovered the fact that the debt was still in-house when the original question was asked and that they had simply passed it over to the bailiffs after telling my friend that it had already gone. The bailiff company still said that they had no record and then, a few weeks later, along comes 2 blokes and a van to remove her goods! No prior request had been made to pay the debt, they simply arrived and turned a £300 debt which my friend was always willing to pay into a £750 debt which gave them a healthy commission.
Oh, and why is it that T&W council give all their debts to a firm of bailiffs based in Redditch, well away from Telford and hard to contact at the best of times? When a Telford resident’s goods are snatched like this, they are sent to the bailiff’s auction house in Worcestershire. Local debts should be enforced locally and at least give hard-pressed people the chance to bid for their own goods without the need to travel a long distance to do so.
And the other problem with T&W is that it is very hard to know when you are in debt with them because they have two branches working on council tax – benefits and revenue. They work at different speeds and it is possible to receive an “all clear” one day and then be in debt the next, only to be clear again the next.
I was advised by letter yesterday that I owed the council £59 unpaid tax. I was horrified as I felt that I had been overpaying for months. On phoning, I was told not to worry, because that was a cancelling balance due to a change in circumstances and that next week a new balance would be notified showing that I have actually OVERPAID £60 to them. But without calling to check and due to the recent experience of my friend, I was ready to assume that the debt was about to be handed over to bailiffs, leading to who knows what additional “service fees”.
T&W, you need to get your computer systems up to date and you need to only send debts over to the bailiffs when you have made a FINAL decision on what is owed. If you send out an interim bill, you must make it clear that it’s interim and not actionable as a debt.
Oh, and CAB, no, you’re not brilliant, you’re not particularly efficient and having worked with you as a volunteer in the past, you’re not always correct. I left CAB, horrified at some of the advice that trainers were giving to clients. “Pay the mortgage, council tax and electric / gas and IGNORE the low priority credit card bills”. Sorry, CAB, some debts are less priority than others, but telling people to IGNORE them is NOT the way forward as this will indicate that the debtor is not willing to face the debt and eventually pay.
My advice to all debtors DO NOT IGNORE DEBTS! Even if you cannot pay at the moment, contact everybody to show willingness to enter dialogue. Avoid CAB, at least in Shropshire, they’re out of their depth at the moment. Contact Payplan or National Debtline for FREE assistance and, where needed, FREE arrangements for you, none of this premium rate malarkey with commission to be paid.
Report abuse
Excellent comment – was interesting to read – thank you. Is there any way this could be forwarded onto TWC big cheeses?
Report abuse
All councils are too heavy handed, when a little courtesy would be all that’s needed.
I’ve just got back from holiday to find a council tax reminder which gave me 7 days to pay or they send me to court.
It was their mistake, I normally pay diect debit but they had not set it up correctly this year. Imagine if I had gone on holiday few days later and stayed for two weeks. These people need a lesson in handling people.
Report abuse