Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Judgement day … on Magistrates and LBH
THIS MORNING, with other members of the public, I attended the High Court for the Hearing of The Queen on the application of Nicolson v Tottenham Magistrates (CO/976/2014).
The case concerns the £125 charge that – via the Magistrate's Court – the Council levies on top of unpaid Council Tax. This often impacts those who are least able to pay. In any event, the charge is supposed to reflect the Council's direct and reasonable costs (only).
It's not supposed to be (in accounting terminology) a profit centre. Though I did not hear it today, this could also be expressed such that, the charge ought to do no more than to reflect the Council's marginal costs (i.e. the extra, or incremental costs), rather than somehow amortising some of the fixed costs and ongoing overheads of a whole department.
One fellow member of the public – whose knowledge of the mechanising of the process is much better than mine – suggested that the actual, direct, costs could be as little as 83p/claim (more information, if and when it comes to hand).
The Judicial Review was brought by the Rev. Paul Nicolson and was heard in Court 3 of the Royal Courts of Justice before Mrs Justice Andrews.
Reverend Nicolson had asked for a breakdown of the £125 charge.
In respect of an 'explanation' eventually offered, the Judge used the word (amongst other pithy description), waffle.
A distinction is drawn between costs reasonably incurred and incurring reasonable costs (or, kind-of-cost vs. level-of-cost). There was a claim that there had been an explanatory schedule on paper back in 2010 ... but that could not now be found.
At one point, the Judge suggested that Magistrates were the only thing that stood in the way of the Council charging whatever it liked.
Although Justice Andrews reserved judgement, she expects to be able to deliver it next week. The Court's decision could have wide ramifications.
More about the case here
and here:
Tags for Forum Posts: Council, Court, High, JR, Judicial Review, Magistrates, charge, tax, £125
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Many thanks for posting this, Clive. And also for giving HoL members the links so we can get further information.
But even more, I believe we all owe warm thanks to Paul Nicolson and his supporters in TAP - Taxpayers Against Poverty - for pursuing this case. Once more we see our Council's lack of compassion and failure to properly appreciate the plight of some of the most vulnerable people in Haringey.
Plainly, until the Court judgement is delivered, we can't assume the outcome of the case. But your report is grounds for optimism.
Anyone feeling generous can donate to TAP. Details on their website here.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Alan I wholly agree with your comments about Rev. Nicolson. What a doughty campaigner! After we learn the judgement, I intend to comment further on Council morality. (incidentally, I was the only Member of the Council present in Court. But: should the Council anyway have defended this case?)
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Permalink Reply by Sarah on
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I work for a council and I used to be a lawyer. Preparing a case can take up a lot of officer time and that it before it is passed to legal. Legal then charge us for their part.
I really don't think our taxpayers should have to pay for the cost of bringing a case to prosecution. £125 actually sounds a little on the low side.
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Preparing this case for the High Court may have taken up officer time and it will have cost taxpayers thousands of pounds. I almost felt sorry for LBH's barrister, who had a feeble case on which to make submissions, which is why I posed the question, should the Council anyway have defended the case?
As for residents charged £125: they are not considered individually, but en masse via a computer programme used by several Boroughs (I hope to receive more information about this). There's obviously some checking involved of a list, but it's misleading to suggest these are brought and prepared on "a case" by case basis.
In Court yesterday, we learnt that in Wales, the fee is capped at £70. I understand some Boroughs in England charge much less than that.
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Sarah, please read though the TAP website entry on the case.
Many decades ago, I too used to be a lawyer - a solicitor working for a private practice. (I later switched to local authority Social Work.) Maybe things have changed, but I was required to keep a carefully written file record of every piece of work I did on a client's behalf. Not just every document, but every meeting and a note of every phonecall. Mainly this was to ensure there was always a full and accurate record. And that this didn't depend on the lawyer or paralegal doing the work staying around.
But it was also to ensure that clients were properly, legitimately and fully billed. (You probably know the old joke that, if you see your solicitor in the street at the weekend, you should just smile and nod politely. Never say: "It's a lovely day, isn't it?")
Also as you'll know, costs awarded in successful litigation were circumscribed by the courts. As I recall, they had to be actually incurred and they had to be reasonable.
So your point, Sarah, is valid - assuming that the actual and reasonable costs are charged. One of Paul Nicolson's points - if I understand it correctly - is that Haringey is not doing this. That instead it has an administrative machine churning out summonses. (A sort of autopilot.) And that at least partly this is deliberate; to "punish" late payers and to act as a deterrent.
Paul Nicolson makes a further argument: that it is ethically wrong to drive many of the poorest and most vulnerable people into deeper debt. I strongly agree with him.
There's a further point in the Nicolson case. Which - at least to me - is shameful.
Neither Haringey Council nor the Magistrates Court are able to find and produce a copy of the key document which the Council sent to the Court in 2010. This was the document which asked for and justified an increase from £95 to £125 in the automatic standard fee which the Council claimed for every Council Tax arrears case.
On 3 March 2015 Michelle vonAhn made a Freedom of information Act request to Haringey Council for this document. Here's the link. Michelle's request was refused by Haringey. This was the reason given.
"We do not hold this information. It was attached to an email but we no longer have access to the email attachment as the officer who sent it (in 2010) has now left."
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You're right, that is shameful!
And I agree that it is different when they are processed in bulk as these seem to be.
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Alan, most email systems – especially including free, web-based ones – hold copies and feature back-ups. If the casual explanation (that you quote) from the Local Authority is to be believed, one has to wonder if there is any important Council information that could not be lost, simply as a result of an employee leaving.
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Emails also have a sender and a receiver so it's a shame the court somehow doesn't have their copy any more.
I think IT can retrieve emails of people who have left.
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Emails also have a sender and a receiver
Good point. Shame is the operative word in this affair.
If the email and the attachment existed in the first place, it may have been decided that it reflected no credit on either party and it needed to be lost.
Alternatively, the technical explanation (the information is inaccessible) beggars belief. Not only has the email disappeared on both sides, but the attachment – that existed as a separate file – is also disappeared.
Since it was the basis of generating hundreds of thousands of pounds (or even millions) of extra income for the Council – and even if the Council email system is insecure or lacks robustness – one might have thought that it would be important enough to store separately.
From the exchanges in Court my impression was one of collusion between supine local magistrates and overweening local bureaucrats (and, it has to be said, careless or inattentive political masters).
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Permalink Reply by Rev Paul Nicolson on
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Sarah - I work with and for people who cannot afford to pay their council tax. I initiated the case because the poorest residents of LBH cannot afford the council tax let alone the £125 court costs. In 12,000 cases the bailiffs add their £75 admin fees and their £235 for a visit. I wanted to know how £125 is calculated for the 20,000 plus residents who are forced to pay an income around £3 million to the council. There would have been no need for the case, or its costs, if the magistrates and the council had cooperated from the beginning but they refused.
Since April 2013 Haringey council, like 250 other councils in England and Wales, have passed the whole weight of the 10% reduction in government CTB funding on to benefits claimants in work and unemployment leaving the incomes of those of us, who can afford the 86p increase in our council tax it would take to maintain the 100% council tax benefit, untouched by any increase. The Local Government Association has reported that councils will lo.... That £1 billion could have been used for local services.
The council is predictably wasting and losing money trying to enforce the tax against people who cannot pay; and causing severe distress in many cases. Ask the local GPs.
The reasons people cannot pay the tax are pretty obvious. The adult JSA benefit is now £73.10 pence a week. It has been diminishing in value since 1980 (see this letter in the Guardian in 2009 when it was £64.30 a week) Since the 2008 collapse of the banks residents claiming benefits were first hit by the Labour government with Local Housing Allowance and the start of the sanctions and then by the Coalition with the bedroom tax, the £500 cap and the 1% pa freeze in benefit increases, and racking up the sanctions, while prices of food, utilities, clothes and transport escalate. So we now have that £73.10 a week further diminishing in value and paying up to £24 week bedroom tax and £5 council tax and a then all the enforcement costs are added at £125 a time; that is the cost of a healthy diet for three weeks according to the Rontree researches see table 1.
As soon as the responsibilities of the magistrates have been settled by judgement of the High Court in my case I have asked the external auditor to produce a report in the public interest on how much the costs imposed by the council on late and non paying residents should be.
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I am very sympathetic to the plight of those in poverty and I can assure you I vote accordingly. Personally, I get the single person council tax discount and while 75% is still a lot to pay, I'd happily pay more but I know not everyone agrees... certainly, having become a higher rate tax payer in the past year (though after tax relief on my pension I don't actually pay any tax at the higher rate) I'd be happy to pay more income tax too. In my MSc I looked at household food insecurity and emerged a strong supporter of any measure to reduce inequalities.
Working for a council I see the situation from that side too though. It is a difficult one. Councils have had to make extreme cuts in the past few years and difficult decisions have had to be made.
I worry that if non-payment is not enforced it will lead to more people not paying, which councils simply cannot afford.
There's really no simple answer but having all the relevant information might bring us closer.
as an aside - watching Question Time last night I found myself shouting at David Cameron when he said no one who earns the minimum wage of £12,500 will pay any tax at all. I have two problems with this: £12,500 is too low, raise the minimum wage (and make sure everyone in London is on LLW). Also, I think people _should_ pay tax and can take pride in their contribution - so make sure everyone is earning an income that allows them to do so!
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Judgement is due in this case at 10am tomorrow 6 May 2015. It's at the High Court in the Strand. (Court Number to be announced.)
The case is called : Nicolson v Tottenham Magistrates & London Borough of Haringey. From past experience I suggest it's wise to get there early and look at the listed cases posted on noticeboards just inside the security entrance. At the same location there are helpful Court staff you can ask.
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