17 January - Your caring listening council strikes again
Today I received documents to confirm something I first heard about a week
ago. The specific case involves a couple of pensionable age who like many of us
were due to make their last council tax payment of the current financial year on
1st January. As almost everyone must know, 1st January is a bank holiday and
this year it fell on a Friday. It does not take a lot of intelligence to work
out that business life was not likely to start again until Monday 4th January
and on that day the final tax installment was paid. On the very same day Bexley
council sent the couple a letter saying no payment had been received by the 4th
of the month and as a result the agreement to pay monthly had been cancelled.
Payment in full was demanded by the 14th on pain of court action and costs of £95.
Whilst the arrival of this letter must have come as a shock to someone who had
paid promptly and not had any previous communication on the subject it was
nothing like as offensive as one I received in 2007
but it remains completely unforgiving for a first letter. What if a lack of payment has
been caused by death? How insensitive can the imbeciles who run Bexley council be?
It is my understanding that local taxation is contracted to the company
popularly known as Crapita and I’m not sure why we are expected to deal with
such a shower. We don’t have to write to Serco (the current waste contractor) when our
bins get missed or to the electricity company when street or traffic lights
fail. However the couple have replied to Capita’s Erith address and in due
course we may see what excuse they come up with.