Council pays back £12 after thousands taxed early

A council has issued £12 in compensation to one person after thousands of residents had their council tax payment taken early.

Wealden District Council has held an external review for taking direct debits from more than 17,000 households on 27 December 2024 rather than on 2 January 2025.

Councillor Daniel Manvell told BBC Radio Sussex the council has apologised for causing stress so close to Christmas but says they have so far received no evidence residents were impacted financially.

He said: "We know it's the worst for a large unexpected payment for anybody and we are just really sorry that that happened."

Councillor Michael Lunn told BBC Radio Sussex in December that 17,594 households and 324 business rate customers were affected by the early payments being taken.

Speaking on Tuesday, Manvell said so far only five residents had come forward to claim charges, while only one could prove charges were taken due to the payment.

"While we think there was a lot of distress caused, and inconvenience caused by this potentially, we haven't got the evidence to say lots of people were put out of pocket," he said.

The council is encouraging anyone who was issued overdraft charges due to the early payments to get in touch.

At the time, Wealden District Council was criticised for issuing a Facebook post to apologise for the inconvenience caused.

The external reviewed looked into the council's communications at the time.

Manvell said: "Because we are a well-run council, we don't regularly have these sorts of issues where something really serious goes wrong.

"Unfortunately that meant that our communications just weren't quite there in terms of what we needed to have in a response."

He added that an internal audit held by the council showed they had already put in measures to prevent the issue for happening again.

"We are sorry about this. It can't happen again and we've got new measures in place to ensure we can communicate more effectively if things do go wrong in the future," he said.

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