Bullying by an authority or organisation against an individual – phase 5

As I mentioned earlier, the Citizen’s Advice Bureau has well documented actions by local authorities against members of the population and outlined the responsibilities that the councils do hold, even though they try and abscond themselves from these duties.

Here is an example of a campaign used by a council to bully a member of the public over council tax arrears.

1. The citizen fell behind on council tax due to the nature of his business (builder/property developer) and the actions of companies (letting agencies) who do not do what they are paid for.

2. The council sends out summons and liability orders that:

• Are not what they say they are.
• Cost a fraction of what some councils try to charge for them.
• Are way too heavy handed and threatening.
• Have not been preceded by any neutral warnings, requests for payment or reasonable approaches to arrange payments in a viable manner.
• Private service providers are used who are not constrained by the same obligations to the public that local authorities are, giving the local authority the opportunity to shun their responsibilities and pass the buck.
• Charges incurred by councils, or any costs they choose, are passed onto the citizen. This is a non-physical of the “bully attack,” when the bully uses force to extract their prize from their victim.
• Spoils from the “bully attack” make their way back to the ‘ringleader’. Again this gives us a clue as any income made by councils that they will not declare when asked under the Freedom of Information Act is likely to have been purloined through this type of bullying. In other words, these funds have been extorted through unlawful means.