London Borough of Havering

The 2011 Audit Commission Annual Report states that Havering targeted 'high risk' discount cases. It states this as a matter of praise, despite the Commission denying that it ever identified people as 'high risk' fraud cases itself.


This raises the question of whether Havering has joined the ranks of those councils who are improperly administering the tax and identifying people as 'high risk' cases on the basis of fictitious discrepancies in line with the legally inaccurate guidance on the Audit Commission's secret web site.


The web site of the council appears to support a view that it is not complying with the law. It certainly provides misleading information to taxpayers.  For example, this assertion appears:

The full council tax is based on two or more adults living in your property. If you are the only adult occupier you can claim a 25% discount. You may also be able to claim a discount if you live with someone else as some people are not counted for council tax purposes.


This implies that there are two different discounts: the sole occupier discount and the disregard discount.  It also implies that the legal position of the taxpayer is that he or she is 'claiming' one or the other.


A second council tax page is somewhat hard to follow as whoever produced it put full stops in the middle of sentences.  But it lists disregards separately from the 'single person discount', while making no mention of the statutory assumptions on which the bill is calculated and issued.


A third page lists disregard discounts as a separate sort of discount, and lists two kinds of disregard discount, depending upon how many people are disregarded.  The page is very badly presented, with spelling and other mistakes, but includes the following misleading information:


As well as SRD 25% discount & 2nd Home discounts (class B) 10% discount the following 14 discounts can also be awarded – these will either be SRD with disregard(s) or disregarded person(s) only in the property. If all but one resident are disregarded a 25% discount will be awarded


It would appear that the London Borough of Havering cannot distinguish between a disregard category and a discount 'type'. 


CT discount application forms would appear to be an ideal place for councils to discharge their legal duties to provide clear information to residents.   Havering does not provide an application form written in good English, leave alone providing clear and legally accurate information.   


Havering has chosen to use their forms to provide misleading information. 

Before I can reduce your bill, I need to have written confirmation that you live alone. Could you please complete the attached declaration and return it to me, along with this letter in the envelope provided.

It will be necessary for me to review the situation in the future, but you should let me know if your circumstances change in the meantime.


Havering is misleading its residents here.  What the discount recipient should do by law is far more limited: as readers will know, he or she must let the council know if there is no longer any entitlement to a 25% discount.  It is not correct in law that they must let the CT department know if their circumstances 'change in the meantime'. 


Havering has an 'annual notification' section on its web site, but this does not contain the information required by law to be provided in each demand notice, though it provides some of the information required by law to be provided with each demand notice.


The council also publishes an annual 'Your Council Tax Your Services' leaflet on line.  Presumably this is the leaflet which counts as part of the demand notice and which may contain the information on discounts required by law.  Does it state the obligation of the taxpayer correctly? No.


Instead it contains a false assertion similar to that on the initial application letter.

Please note that this is only a summary of the discounts that are available; for full 

details or to apply, please contact Customer Services. Any existing discount entitlement 

is shown on your bill but you must tell the Council within 21 days about any changes of 

circumstances that may affect it or you may be subject to a fine.

The council is failing to provide the information which the law clearly says it must provide about the duty arising under Regulation 16 and is replacing it with inaccurate information coupled with a threat. 





The leaflet also fails to provide enough information about the steps to take in cases where there is disagreement about a discount: it merely asks the person to phone the council.  There is a right to appeal, to a valuation tribunal if need be.


In conclusion, once again we have the NFI praising a council which is not conducting its affairs properly and in accordance with the law, and which is putting out incorrect information and demanding that taxpayers provide third party information voluntarily by threatening them with penalties which it has no power at all to inflict.  


Well done to the NFI.

Tameside council tax discount information: 2 out of 10 for clarity, fairness and accuracy

Tameside Council Web Site

http://www.tameside.gov.uk/benefits/counciltax/singleperson

This is another good example of a council which provides a mixture of incorrect and misleading information coupled with unjustifiable threats of financial penalties for not doing something there is no requirement in law for you to do.  It would appear that the council has confused the categories on its IT systems with legal provisions, failing to realise that the two do not correspond.  If this is the case, then the council is risking actions for maladministration.  The evidence for this is in various places on its web site, including here:

http://www.tameside.gov.uk/counciltax/discounts

This page has a list of 'discounts'.  It appears that these non existent discount are shown on council tax bills, using codes of some sort linked with IT data base cells, though clearly not with the law.  In that case, there is a distinct possibility that the demand notices fail to comply with the requirement to make the assumption under Regulation 15 and to inform the taxpayer of that obligation.  A table on the page incorrectly lists 'single person discount' and 'single with disregard' as different discounts.  This is legal nonsense.

Other 'guidance' on the web site suggests that Tameside is administering the discount incorrectly on the basis that these are two different sorts of discount.  A Hillingdon-like false assertion that you must tell the council if a child turns 18 appears, for example, together with an assertion that the council must have this information because it is obliged to keep its information up to date. The actual obligation on the council is NOT TO MISINTERPRET information it has, and not comply with Reg 15 and so on.

This mistake appears to be carried through to the bills themselves. According to the web site, demand notices contain codes stating which discount has been deducted, with the same error evident in this coding:

Code
01 Only one resident aged 18 or over in the property
02 More than one resident aged 18 or over, but only one is "counted"


If Tameside has calculated and issued the bill on the basis of the 'beliefs' or 'assumptions' about residence indicated in this code it is quite simply breaking the law. 

If you live in Tameside and you are in receipt of a Section 11 25% discount, you should realise that there is no obligation whatsoever on you to tell the council tax department if a child reaches the age of 18.

In legal terms, Tameside ought to provide you with accurate information about your obligations every time it sends you a demand notice to comply with council tax law, and, in terms of general administrative law, it ought to provide you with legally clear and accurate information at all times.

There is NO OBLIGATION TO INFORM THE COUNCIL OF CHANGES THAT  MAY AFFECT YOUR ENTITLEMENT TO A DISCOUNT.

This information is unhelpful and misleading:

We will write to you each year to check if the circumstances are still the same. If you haven't previously told us about a change it will be backdated and you will have to make payment of any arrears promptly.


Not all changes affect entitlement.  Not all changes need to be 'backdated': though the suggestion that they will be back dated probably arises from limited grammatical skills here.  


It would appear that the council has maladministration embedded within its practices, and that these are linked to the way people's information is recorded electronically.


NB Tameside gets its grammar wrong too:

The discount continues for as long as the qualifying criteria is met.