Formal Complaint – 25 December 15 Redact

8/19/2019 Formal Complaint – 25 December 15 Redact

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North East Lincolnshire Council

Finance Department

Civic Offices Knoll Street

Cleethorpes

North East Lincolnshire

DN35 8LN

XY Xxxxxxx Yyyyy

Grimsby

North East Lincolnshire

AB12 3XY

25 December 2015

Dear Mr Smith

Re: Council tax Ref: 5501xxxxxx – Formal Complaint

I am writing in response to your correspondence of 21 December 2015 and wish to escalate this

matter to a Stage 1 formal complaint.

I don’t accept that the council’s affairs are run so poorly that if somebody is off sick there are no

contingency measures in place for that person’s work to be dealt with. It’s almost as if the month’s

delay in conveying the information was deliberate to secure additional payment(s) that the council

knew would not have been made until the following year had I known the council would allocate

monies to the fraudulent costs.

As you have made your position clear which is that you intend to continue using your position

(presumably unsupervised) to defraud me, I will not be making any more payments in respect of my

2015/16 liability until this situation is resolved. Moreover, concerning my December payment,

which would not have been made had your 13.11.15 letter been sent informing me of your intended

shenanigans, this can be either refunded to me, or if preferred, allocated in respect of my 2016/17

liability.

Turning to the fraudulent liability order application. The council appears to be relying on being

absolved of any wrongdoing on account of it being the court which granted the order. Please

remember that no matter how negligent the court was in granting the order, the Council must take

responsibility for making a decision to submit a false statement in its application to the court in

order to defraud me. The allegation directed at the Council is a distinct matter from the court's

determination and needs to be resolved as such.

The Council applied for a liability order for non-payment of council tax which it had engineered by

misallocating monies to a sum that had arisen from a previous year’s summons costs which were

disputed and appealed to the High Court. The council suspended that disputed sum pending a court


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decision; therefore no payments in respect of the current liability were ever overdue. The case (High

Court) is yet to be determined so the costs still suspended; therefore, under no circumstances was it

a sum to which the Claimant could legitimately allocate payment.

Regarding the application, and specifically in relation to the court hearing of 30 October 2015, the

Council made a statement (material in the proceedings) which it knew to be false, to the effect that

the appeal challenging the costs had been withdrawn. Indisputable evidence was submitted by

myself to support why the statement was untrue and why the Council could not have believed it to

have been true.

In any event, it was so clear to the Council from my demand notice that the suspension had not been

lifted due to the sum appearing on it as a separate balance from the current liability, described as a

sum ‘subject to court proceedings’. The Council had even submitted a copy of my current council

tax bill as one of the exhibits (NELC1) to support its witness statement for the court hearing. It is

inexcusable that at the same time as claiming to have no reason to believe that the costs were being

disputed, the council submit an item of evidence to the court that states they are. The relevant part

of the council tax bill states as follows:

“Memorandum Note

Your instalments for 2015/16 do not include your 2014/15 account balance

As at 27-FEB-2015 your 2014/15 Council Tax account balance is 60.00

60.00 of the total is subject to court proceedings”

It is clear that the Council is not willing to comply with the laws of appropriation by rejecting my

express instructions which are for payment in any sum to be allocated to my current year's liability

unless there are express instructions (in writing) to the contrary. You have referred to the case

authorities relied upon in the hearing on 30.10.15 in respect of making my election at the time of

payment implying that the way I have expressly elected to allocate payment is not lawful.

Without going into detail that was set out in my supplementary representations for the hearing, it is

worth at least noting the following with regards the law of appropriation (Debtor’s rights) which are

set out in Chitty on Contracts (31st Edition) Volume 1 at Para 21-061:

“…It is not essential that the debtor should expressly specify at the time of the payment

which debt or account he intended the payment to be applied to. His intention may be

collected from other circumstances showing that he intended at the time of the payment to

appropriate it to a specific debt or account...”


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There is really nothing more needs saying. However, if the Council deems the Northgate system’s

inflexibility would make allocating payments the way I elect unmanageable, it seems that York City

Council is able to accommodate such flexibility within the same automated system. This is evident

in its reply to queries made on the subject of its system’s capabilities (see below):

“The system is set up to allocate funds to the appropriate period where payments received

match to instalment plans or special arrangements.

Additionally to this a suite of exception reports are provided to the specialist Recovery

Team and Cashiers Team each morning to review cases of "soft cash" and suspense account

cases. Where a customer contacts the council to request re-allocation of a payment made, or

to advise the period that a future payment should be allocated to then this is recorded on the

notes of the account and manual allocation or re-allocation takes place.”

Whilst on this particular subject, it would seem that the Northgate system ought to be set so a non-

specified payment is in any event posted by default to the most current debt, not as the Council’s

system is set to post those payments to the oldest. This engineers more indebtedness for the

taxpayer from the irresponsible and excessive use of the court; something more associated with

unscrupulous fly-by-night companies than a local authority. It is with incredulity that the authorities

have allowed such exploitation of the court system for so long.

It should be noted that the case, Devaynes v Noble 1816, in which the Council seeks authority to

support its assertion that unspecified payments are posted correctly (oldest debt) cannot apply in a

system whereby the accounts relate, as they do in council tax, to ‘distinct insulated debts, between

which a plain line of separation could be drawn’.

A more recent case, R v Miskin Lower Justices (1953), held that where an amount so obviously

relates to a specific liability, it would be an unwarranted assumption to allocate the payment

elsewhere. It could be drawn from this that where the purpose for which a payment is made isunspecified ‘it must be carried to that account which it is most beneficial to the debtor to reduce ’

1.

The fact that it would be to the taxpayer’s detriment if allocated to the oldest debt is sufficient to

infer that the payment is intended to reduce his current year’s liability. The 1953 case law, clearly

serves, in these circumstances, to protect the taxpayer from the right of appropriation falling on the

Council when its election may be to the taxpayer’s detriment. It can be concluded that billing

authorities which have their systems set so non-specified payments are posted by default to the most

1 Walter Pereira's Laws of Ceylon at page 722


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current debt is because it would be an unwarranted assumption to allocate monies to a sum in

arrears if it is likely to also put the current year's liability in arrears.

It is not a satisfactory arrangement for the Council to rely on statutory notices being served to alert

the taxpayer that payment has been misallocated. These notices form the necessary steps after

which enforcement may be actionable to the taxpayer’s detriment. The simplest way to prevent this

occurring and save on unnecessary expenditure would be by setting the system to allocate payments

which do not match a debt instalment to the current year's liability. That is unless the Council have

targets to meet for generating a certain level of court costs income through engineering default.

The Council should recall the numerous communications regarding the disputed outstanding costs,

to which payment was fraudulently diverted, in which it had stated that it had made no decision on

how it would enforce the debt. For example the Council referred to making no decision to enforce

the sum in a response to a letter (14.7.14) but gave an undertaking to give ample notice of any

action it decided on (see below):

“With regards to the £60.00 outstanding on your account I can make you aware that it is for

North East Lincolnshire Council to decide on any course of action.

Any action that is taken will of course be relayed to you, giving you ample notice.”

Similarly in response to a formal complaint (15.9.14) the investigating officer recommended that

the Council consider the options available to them to recover the outstanding sum and decide on

what would be the appropriate course of action to take but ensure that the Council duly informed

me of any action that is to be taken.

The Council has never given me any notification that it had taken a decision to enforce the sum let

alone what steps it would take. A liability order empowers the Council to recover arrears by such

methods as Attachment of Earnings/Benefits or instructing bailiffs to seize goods. There is nothing

likely to be set out in legislation allowing the Council to adopt a system of deception, as appears to

have happened in this case. In any event, the High Court has not yet made a decision and if it had,

there is no logical reason why it would not have found the liability order to enforce the summons

costs had been obtained unlawfully, because like in R (Nicolson) v Tottenham Magistrates [2015]

EWHC 1252 (Admin), the court had insufficient information to determine the reasonableness of

costs claimed.


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It goes without saying that financial redress for the maladministration would have better been

considered at the earliest opportunity and not continued to cause gross inconvenience over such a

protracted period of time without remedy. The Council has a responsibility to put right its error and

pay an appropriate amount to compensate for it, especially as it is to such an extent as this. It should

not be necessary to be constantly having to coerce the Council to take the appropriate action; it

should routinely consider this in an attempt to rectify the maladministration.

The council will now hopefully be in a better position to consider its actions and will attend to my

account by removing the costs and offer a significant sum of compensation to reflect the protracted

period of gross inconvenience. As I suggested in my first letter, the Council might want to have the

liability order quashed by making an application to the Magistrates’ court.

I also expect a reviewed response to the allocation of monies to the year’s account which I specify.

Yours sincerely

X. Yyyyyy

Documents

Formal Complaint – 25 December 15 Redact