Councils pocket £34M in court costs scam

How councils were caught milking the most vulnerable members of society

Revealed! the £34M shame of Councils caught pocketing refunds to vulnerable Council Tax victims.

This week HMCTS has revealed the massive paybacks which U.K. councils have pocketed when they were refunded nearly £34 Million pounds in 2022 due to overcharges in court fees for Council tax cases.

The hefty refunds were made to rectify years worth of mistakes made when HMCTS overcharged councils a £3.00 fee for each court defendant instead of the 50p allowed by law.

Although this amount is small for each case, because councils regularly take 1,000 - 2,000 people to Court at a time in a controversial procedure known as “bulk listing” councils can rake in up to a quarter of a million pounds in “costs” at each bulk hearing which last about half an hour and typically takes place on average about once a month.

Councils then seek to apply for these massive payouts unopposed by using many underhanded tactics to try and dissuade defendants from turning up at court. Even if defendants turn up councils have legions of predatory staff prowling the court lobby touting for people to sign up to repayment plans to stop them asking inconvenient questions in front of magistrates. Councils regularly print their own “summons” which purports to be a court document ( some even use the Royal Crest without permission from the Crown ) and falsely inform defendants that they have no right to challenge the application.  Councils omit to refer defendants to The Citizens Advice Bureau or independent legal representation despite laws existing which give defendants the right to challenge illegal applications. ( * see below ).

Councils have raked in an eye watering £33,878,000 over the years that they were not entitled to by overcharging for court fees. Legal experts have urged defendants not to take notice of the misleading claims on the summons issued by councils and to turn up at Court to assert their rights by scrutinising the councils costs as required by law.*

A DIY manual has been produced by campaigner Paul Patterson which shows how this can be done.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/MY-COUNCIL-TAX-STANCE-withholding/dp/1976759161

Auditors have questioned councils in the U.K. and were unable to find any that had even attempted to refund the money to its rightful owners, which has led to allegations of fraudulent accounting practices and profiteering from the most vulnerable members of society that the councils have a duty to protect as holders of the public purse.

Investigations into Cornwall Council revealed that the council were advised by their professional body the IRRV that issuing refunds was “  uneconomical to trace and refund £2.50 to over 100,000 individual recipients,” despite councils having bespoke software at their disposal which lists every Council tax account. Cornwall Council made no effort to inform residents of the £300,000 windfall they had been given and cynically concluded that “, if a Council Tax Payer were to come forward for their refund, the Council would be obliged to pay it however this isnt deemed to be a significant likelihood.” Many councils even get this software for free by recharging this licence fee back to defendants by hiding the licence cost in black budgets.

Such false accounting is widespread by councils as exemplified in a recent court case on 5th July 2023 where Buckinghamshire Council were shown to have presented the court with unlawful costs which were subsequently dismissed by magistrates after it was claimed that 58% of their budget was a scam. Council head of enforcement was caught lying to council tax payers claiming reports of the ruling were from “an unreliable source”  or internet rumours after numerous Council Tax payers demanded refunds of the banned court costs when Buckinghamshire Council unlawfully charged the fake costs to unwitting defendants despite the court ruling they were not in accordance with the law.

Some councils like South Gloucester cynically use outdated covid guidelines to insist on phone hearings in order to disbar defendants from submitting written evidence. In one recent case the Court Clerk at North Somerset Magistrates Court Helen Farley reportedly asked defendants who had turned up in person for their phone numbers so they could call the court that they were standing in to conduct their defence! She then ruled that evidence could not be submitted against the council despite the council being on a video link, and when defendants complained this was a breach of their human rights to a fair trial 3 vans of police were called who tried to eject defendants who were searching the court for the hidden rooms where the court was trying to conduct the case out of the view of the public contrary to the Ministry of Justice’s “Open justice” mandates.

As more and more reports surface of the collusion and misfeasance perpetrated by courts proving clear bias against defendants, resistance is growing exponentially and will soon reach the same level that toppled the Poll tax when normal law abiding people already stretched to breaking point, turn up in their droves at every court hearing demanding the justice that is their birthright.

See the attached spreadsheet for details of your Council

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*Nicholson versus Tottenham Magistrates

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2015/1252.html

*Ewing versus Highbury Corner Magistrates

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2015/3788.html

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