In December 2011, Miles Brignall, consumer affairs writer at the Guardian, wrote an article entitled 'The Council Tax Shock of Living Alone'.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/dec/16/council-tax-shock-single-person-discount?INTCMP=SRCH
The article, published in a series dealing with unfair and irrational treatment of consumers, deals with the distress experienced by a Bristol resident at the hands of her local council, acting on the basis of what one might rather loosely call 'information' provided by credit reference agency Experian.
The victim on this occasion was Sarah Dodds, a semi-retired civil servant, who, ironically, used to work helping to catch people who were committing benefit fraud. This just shows that no matter how responsible your past or impeccable your references and reputation, you get caught up in this mess.
Ms Dodds' experience mirrors my own: first she received a distressing letter, in her case demanding £3,000 in back paid tax, and then she was informed by council staff that they suspected her making a fraudulent claim for the discount. Fraud, put briefly, consists of dishonestly making a false representation with the intention of making a gain or causing loss or risk of loss to another or of failing to declare information required by law.
It would appear that the council did not find it necessary to produce any evidence to support this suspicion. This is partly because the whole matter was dealt with under civil powers. Put simply, councils do not require evidence.
In a crucial passage, the journalist exposes the fact that Experian have been grading people according to alleged potential risk that they might be thieves. It is apparently on this basis that the council suspected Ms Dodds of fraud and issued with her with a backdated adjusted demand notice.
The law requires the council to inform all residents of their right to appeal against a decision on discounts to a valuation tribunal. It seems that the council failed to inform Ms Dodds of this right, and it refused to discuss the matter with the journalist either. On this basis, Ms Dodds would appear to have grounds for complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman. Councils should provide clear and fair information and should not cause distress by failing to provide it. But as all too many of us know, once they suspect you of fraud, they treat you like dirt. Moreover, whoever was handling the case may have been a temp hired in for the purpose, with a limited brief and no background knowledge in any of the relevant tax law.
The council refused to send anybody round to inspect Ms Dodds' home, which, she felt would demonstrate that no other person lived there. Its actions appear to speak complete indifference to the distress and reputation of a person whose life has been spent protecting the public purse. It stated 'adamantly' that unless Mrs Dodds could tell them where her son lived it would insist on her paying their backdated demand. Mrs Dodds says she does not know and as they are on bad terms she has not been able to find out. This mirrors similar cases where marriages have dissolved on bad terms and the partner remaining in the house does not know where the other now lives. In such cases, some councils do simply refuse to believe the remaining partner and issue bills for the full amount.
The other point relating to an appeal is, of course, as I have pointed out, that when a council suspects you of fraud or assumes that you are a thief, and uses civil methods to recover money it thinks you have stolen there is no appeal against the criminal 'charge' as no formal charge is ever brought. Yet the fact that you have been suspected of that offence becomes marketable data, which may be sold to and by, yes, you guessed it, credit reference agencies.
The trigger for all this appears not to have been the electoral register, but the fact that bank statements and other letters to Ms Dodds' estranged son were still being sent to his mother's address. This is the data from which the council derived its conclusions that his mother was probably a thief.
An Experian spokesperson appears to have given an account of the matter which is misleading in terms of council tax law, as it asserts that the legal position of Ms Dodds at the time it did its data matching was that she was 'claiming to live alone'. This would not have been the case. I put this down to simple ignorance on the part of Experian, but this drip drip of misleading information does nothing to clarify matters and serves only to further sling mud at innocent people.
Indeed, the article was commented upon by a number of people all to happy to mentally convict not just Ms Dodds but also the estranged son of fraud on the basis that he ought to be paying council tax but is not. Nobody has established that he is not paying council tax, or that he is liable to pay council tax. Of course, even if his sole or main residence was with his estranged mother he would still not necessarily be liable to pay the tax: clearly it is she who must pay it.
Residence in terms of council tax discount law is sole or main residence. The law clearly acknowledges that a person may have more than one residence but they only count as living at one of these for council tax purposes.
Experian's web site states that if another person is 'linked' with your address they may be able to break this link if you contact them. There is however nothing wrong with having another person 'linked' with your address through data bases: it is not a crime and it certainly does not establish that your home is their sole or main residence.
But as we have seen time and time again evidence has nothing to do with it.
Brignall notes that some councils use Northgate, who appear to be subcontractors who obtain contracts from councils and then purchase data matching from Experian. Experian regard this as a significant part of their business; in other words they make a lot of money from it. I obtained a copy of the contract between them and my council and it had disclaimers all over it so that nobody caused distress or injustice could go after Experian: the council takes full responsibility.
Brignall mentions Lincolnshire and Rushmoor as two other councils running similar exercises. I shall check whether their web sites contain the almost routine misinformation about council tax discounts.
He also asserts that councils are allowed to contract out the job of checking entitlement to discounts. I do not know where he derived this wording, but what they are allowed to contract out is the legal duty to ascertain, once every year, whether any discount should apply and if so the amount of that discount.
It was certain that this mess would hit the national papers. Ms Dodds is clearly intelligent and articulate enough to get her case aired in the national press. The majority of victims of it are not.
Bob Neill, at the time Undersecretary of State at the Department of Communities and Local Government saw fit to comment that people should not be deterred from claiming their discounts and explaining how these discounts worked. He also emphasised that councils ought to provide reliable information.
But as my research shows, almost no councils do, and those using firms like Experian and Capita seem to be amongst the worst of the bunch.
