Staff at Wealden District Council have been blamed for an error which saw council tax payments taken from thousands of residents accounts unexpectedly before Christmas.
Green Party council leader, Cllr Rachel Millward, says it was the fault of "the person uploading the BACS file" and has apologised to the 17,594 Council Tax customers and 324 business rates customers affected by the mistake.
Conservative councillors acknowledge that blunders occur but criticise the communication, or lack of, to those affected.
Cllr Michael Lunn explained:
The Council have thousands of contact addresses through their Conservative-inspired Wealden Weekly.
Why on earth did they not use this effective means of communicating this technical error.? They knew there was a problem yet most people have only discovered it, to their cost, via their bank.’
It seems that the Green council leader had not felt it appropriate to email all elected councillors to inform them of the problems. This left members unable to advise or reassure the deluge of concerned residents who started to contact them.
Cllr Lunn adds: “One of the most basic responsibilities of a District Council is to collect Council Tax & Business rates. This has had a significant impact on our residents during the most financially demanding time of the year for working families, small local firms, those on benefits, or hard-up pensioners still reeling from the withdrawal of winter fuel payments.
"We discover that the council knew about the problem, but had no contingency for effectively communicating with residents through existing available channels. There will have been an economic impact on those without arranged overdraft facilities. A full & independent enquiry is needed with a report brought to the next Audit, Finance & Governance Committee.”
This travesty of communication between the Council and residents follows a week of self congratulation and political posturing on official Wealden District social media channels by the Green/Labour/Lib Dem left-wing coalition which runs the authority. We cannot help wondering whether their focus has drifted too far away from the provision of the key statutory services that our residents value.
Wealden District Conservative Councillors want answers. We’ll ensure those who caused this problem are held to account.
If you have experienced a problem or hardship associated with this problem please email Wealden District Council at: [email protected] and if you do not get an appropriate response please contact your District Councillor direct (see Wealden District Website, to search for Your Councillor). But the council offices remain closed until 2nd January.
