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Small Claims Court

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OldChestNuts | 21:18 Wed 05th Oct 2022 | Law
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Anyone used small claims court against city council?
Is this possible?
Trying to claims council tax refund and there seems to be no one working at the council to deal with the refunds. Tried email, letters, spoken to the customer service, tried local councillors. All non help to recover a few hundreds of pounds.
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I wouldn't have thought you would have to take it to small claims for this. Could you actually go to the offices, rather than phone/email etc?
I was receiving the maximum discount on my Council Tax bill due to my ow income. Then my circumstances changed, marginally for the better, so I immediately wrote to the relevant council department, with exact dates and figures quoted in my letter.

My next Council Tax bill still showed the maximum discount though, so I assumed that my income remained below the threshold for me to have to pay the full amount.

However att the very end of the tax year, the council sent me a demand for a full year's Council Tax, which had to be paid as a lump sum (i.e. with no option to make monthly payments).

I contacted my local councillor, stating that I felt that I'd been treated unfairly, as getting such a large bill out of the blue meant that I'd have to use a very expensive credit card to make the payment. She contacted the Head of Finance at the local council, resulting in my entire bill for a year's Council Tax being entirely written off (and thus saving me over a thousand quid).

So, rather than going via the Small Claims Process, I strongly suggest that, in the first instance at least, you should contact your local councillor. You're far more likely to get a swift resolution to your problem than by going through the courts - and it won't cost you anything either!
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I am talking about Birmingham city council in this regards. There is no office and all closed. All staff are working from home. This working from home is the root cause because they are not working.
Are you sure there all working from home and there's no office? If your right then there's noone there to reieve your letter so that might explain it
What's the refund claim for oldchestnuts? Have you claimed your in wrong band? Have they took wrong DD Amount?
Councillor(S)? Get back on to the best of the bunch and tell them it's not sorted and see what they say.
If you try the Small Claims court, make sure you've got a paper trail of what you've tried so far, otherwise you are unlikely to get your costs awarded.
Yes - you can sue the council ( they are a 'legal person')
I wdnt yet.
There must be a complaints procedure: I wd follow that. It is after all really a complainnt
>>> There must be a complaints procedure: I wd follow that

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/complaints
How about the Local Government Ombudsman? There should be details on the Council’s complaint procedures.
The council neighbourhood offices in Birmingham is open to the public - have you contacted yours?

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