5 January - Bexley’s debtors were robbed. Everyone agrees on that but no general refund
If Councillor Maxine Fothergill has done
what her colleagues reported it
certainly suggests a lack of any sense of what is right or wrong and an absence
of any conscience or common decency but I strangely feel no sense of shock. I
must be becoming inured to such behaviour after six years of observing Bexley’s Conservatives closely.
If an estate agent has valued a property such that it becomes an absolute
bargain that simply must be sold to a colleague or snapped up by the agent; well
it wouldn’t be the first time I have heard such a story. Maybe Maxine Fothergill
is just your average Tory and just your average estate agent.
On the other hand if a rogue trader charged £10,000 for replacing three cracked
tiles on an old lady’s roof the police and Trading Services would undoubtedly
take an interest, and the losses might be small by comparison with a shady property deal.
I still tend to think that Bexley council’s cover up is worse than what one
councillor may have done. It makes everyone look bent. That is probably why I
regard Bexley’s Parking Services use of bailiffs as being far more serious than
anything Maxine Fothergill may have done although it is unlikely the subject
will ever raise as much interest.
These people deliberately set out to extract money from the public over and above what was due.
The Local Government Ombudsman caught them out in 2012 but Bexley Council did
nothing to ensure that the practice stopped. The senior management all get in the
region of £100,000 a year for being ineffective.
When JBW Group (the bailiffs) sold a car to cover a debt, the standard fees were doubled. The bailiff reduced
the bid price by the amount of the auctioneer’s fee and when the debtor’s
account was prepared it put that reduced amount in the ‘Plus’ column. The
auctioneer’s fee was additionally put in the ‘Minus’ column. The fee was thereby levied
twice, not just occasionally but every single time.
If a debtor settles his bill when the bailiff first calls an early closure fee
becomes due, but not in any other circumstances. However the fee was added to
every debtor’s account - every single time.
The taking away fees were incorrectly applied and very often the storage fees were exaggerated.
Bexley Council knew about it but chose to do nothing to stop it.
The Finance and Legal Departments only began to take it seriously after my
objection to the 2013/14 accounts. There is no excuse for Bexley Council ignoring the
LGO’s report, in fact they did a deal with the LGO which was basically “you keep
the lid on this and not go public and we will make sure it doesn’t happen again”.
But Bexley Council did nothing.
Following my complaint things changed. An internal report was highly critical of
Bexley’s Parking Services Department, so critical that I am under legal restraint
from telling you what was in it. Suffice to say they found much the same
malpractice as had been suspected.
Ideally Bexley Council should have made the JBW Group refund all the
overpayments but despite Bexley’s Finance and Legal Departments both concluding
that the double charging was absolutely wrong the bailiff insisted they had
interpreted the law correctly. Few would agree.
Bexley Council was understandably reluctant to arrange refunds because the
overpayments had gone into the bailiffs’ pockets not theirs.
The official excuse was that there would be no repayments because only a court could decide whether
Bexley's Legal Department, Finance Department, their authorised auditor and pure
common sense was right, or whether it was JBW. Having
reached that conclusion it was perhaps right not to spend money on testing the theory
before a judge. There are far too many stupid judges around.
In the circumstances the correct course may have been to part company with
JBW Group bailiffs because that company argued that it should operate under different standards
to those required by Bexley Council. It has certainly brought Bexley Council into further disrepute.
Perhaps Bexley Council is far too attached to Capita. JBW is Capita by another name.
Grant Thornton, the Council’s auditor, was about as useful as the proverbial chocolate fireguard.
Their final letter agrees that the bailiffs had no great regard for honest
practice and they identified the following problems…
• Different types of fees (attendance to levy, attendance to remove,
levying distress and removal charges) were all charged or applied on the same day.
• There was evidence of [incorrect application of] multiple levies. i.e. where
more than one PCN was actioned at the same time.
• Incorrect application of closing fees.
• Auction costs applied as a percentage of the sale fee in addition to the fee
charged by the auctioneer.
• The fees for removal and storage and changing locks were not supported by the
receipts.
• Debtors were not provided with a statement of costs when vehicles were sold
contrary to the contract between the Council and the bailiff.
Just like Bexley Council they were unwilling to see the bailiff in court to ensure
that Bexley’s debtors received recompense for being robbed; instead they have
suggested that I should take JBW to court.
My view is that BiB’s role is to expose Bexley council’s wrong doing and heap
as much embarrassment on them as possible and a court victory would probably increase the embarrassment factor
only marginally. The local press which should take that role is usually unwilling to tackle Bexley’s malpractices and a
court victory is far from being a certainty. Bexley Council has its ways of
subverting the law and is not afraid to use them. So once again Bexley Council
gets away with abusing not just its residents but potentially almost anyone who
has parked a car in the borough.
Bexley Council has supposedly been sampling its bailiff’s accounts for at least the past six months,
however if you had a bailiff problem before that and still have the paperwork it’s probably worth checking
through it. Every case I have seen where a car was sold was overcharged by a minimum of £120.
I keep asking myself why Bexley Council let this happen for so long when on the face of
it there was no benefit to anyone but the bailiff. I can think of three things.
• Unscrupulous bailiffs motivated by excessive and unjustified fees were more
likely to chase debtors bringing indirect benefits to Bexley council.
• Money was exchanged in brown envelopes.
• Bexley Council management is incompetent and has no understanding of the
systems they purport to operate.
I suspect it is the third. It takes brains and skill to run a long term criminal operation.
No council official lost their job, Capita continues to provide Bexley’s bailiff services but lots
of ordinary people were robbed.
Note: For simplicity I have referred above to ‘my complaint’. In
law that is true but all the hard work and knowledge of the system and what to
look for was provided by
Notomob.