28.01.22

A tiring week, not helped by the local council's approach to enforcement of council tax. They automatically throw cases across to the bailiffs (sorry, 'enforcement agents'), even when the resident in question's vulnerabilities are undoubtedly known to the council.

The problem is, the people in the council who know about these vulnerabilities are in a different department. It should be basic administrative competence to have different parts of a local authority share information about residents. So why does the council tax enforcement team not know that Resident X, who has lived for decades in a council property, has mental health issues that a bailiff visit could greatly worsen?

It's all arse about face. Rather than the council sharing information internally, or doing any sort of investigation, they send in the bailiffs and rely on that client approaching an advice agency who then informs the council. It is cruel, and it inevitably means ill people suffer. Perhaps not actively by design, but with the same results as if it were.

Elsewhere I call a new client who uses some of the remaining 61p on his electric meter to charge his phone so we can speak. And I think I've got a Freeman-on-the-Land-type, which promises to be hard work.